CHAPTER VII.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. X.--NOVEMBER, 1862.--NO. LXI.

WILD APPLES.

THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the Apple-tree is connected

with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of the

_Rosaceae_, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and the

_Labiatae_, or Mints, were introduced only a short time previous to the

appearance of man on the globe.

It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown primitive

people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom of the Swiss

lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of Rome, so old that

they had no metallic implements. An entire black and shrivelled

Crab-Apple has been recovered from their stores.

Tacitus says of the ancient Germans, that they satisfied their hunger

with wild apples (_agrestia poma_) among other things.

Niebuhr observes that "the words for a house, a field, a plough,

ploughing, wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to

agriculture and the gentler way of life, agree in Latin and Greek, while

the Latin words for all objects pertaining to war or the chase are

utterly alien from the Greek." Thus the apple-tree may be considered a

symbol of peace no less than the olive.

The apple was early so important, and generally distributed, that its

name traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in general.

[Greek: Maelon], in Greek, means an apple, also the fruit of other

trees, also a sheep and any cattle, and finally riches in general.

The apple-tree has been celebrated by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and

Scandinavians. Some have thought that the first human pair were tempted

by its fruit. Goddesses are fabled to have contended for it, dragons

were set to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.

The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament,

and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings,--"As the apple-tree

among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." And

again,--"Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." The noblest part

of man's noblest feature is named from this fruit, "the apple of the

eye."

The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw in

the glorious garden of Alcinoüs "pears and pomegranates, and apple-trees

bearing beautiful fruit" ([Greek: kahi maeleai aglaokarpoi]). And

according to Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus

could not pluck, the wind ever blowing their boughs away from him.

Theophrastus knew and described the apple-tree as a botanist.

According to the Prose Edda, "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which

the gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of

to become young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in

renovated youth until Ragnarök" (or the destruction of the gods).

I learn from Loudon that "the ancient Welsh bards were rewarded for

excelling in song by the token of the apple-spray;" and "in the

Highlands of Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of the clan Lamont."

The apple-tree (_Pyrus malus_) belongs chiefly to the northern temperate

zone. Loudon says, that "it grows spontaneously in every part of Europe

except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China, and Japan."

We have also two or three varieties of the apple indigenous in North

America. The cultivated apple-tree was first introduced into this

country by the earliest settlers, and it is thought to do as well or

better here than anywhere else. Probably some of the varieties which are

now cultivated were first introduced into Britain by the Romans.

Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says,--"Of trees there

are some which are altogether wild (_sylvestres_), some more civilized

(_urbaniores_)." Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and,

indeed, it is in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as

harmless as a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks

and herds. It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more

humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no

longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like the

dog and horse and cow: first, perchance, from Greece to Italy, thence to

England, thence to America; and our Western emigrant is still marching

steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the apple in his

pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his load. At least a

million apple-trees are thus set farther westward this year than any

cultivated ones grew last year. Consider how the Blossom-Week, like the

Sabbath, is thus annually spreading over the prairies; for when man

migrates, he carries with him not only his birds, quadrupeds, insects,

vegetables, and his very sward, but his orchard also.

The leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic

animals, as the cow, horse, sheep, and goat; and the fruit is sought

after by the first, as well as by the hog. Thus there appears to have

existed a natural alliance between these animals and this tree from the

first. "The fruit of the Crab in the forests of France" is said to be "a

great resource for the wild-boar."

Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds,

welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-caterpillar saddled

her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since shared

her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in

a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the

blue-bird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with

haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs, and so became

orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an era in the

history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a savory morsel

under its bark, that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree,

before he left it,--a thing which he had never done before, to my

knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its

buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and still flies, from the

wood, to pluck them, much to the farmer's sorrow. The rabbit, too, was

not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark; and when the fruit

was ripe, the squirrel half-rolled, half-carried it to his hole; and

even the musquash crept up the bank from the brook at evening, and

greedily devoured it, until he had worn a path in the grass there; and

when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and the jay were glad to taste

it occasionally. The owl crept into the first apple-tree that became

hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding it just the place for

him; so, settling down into it, he has remained there ever since.

My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the

seasons in the annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to my

special province.

The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's,

so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is

frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually

handsome one, whose blossoms are two-thirds expanded. How superior it is

in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor

fragrant!

By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of

coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little

ones which fall still-born, as it were,--Nature thus thinning them for

us. The Roman writer Palladius said,--"If apples are inclined to fall

before their time, a stone placed in a split root will retain them."

Some such notion, still surviving, may account for some of the stones

which we see placed to be overgrown in the forks of trees. They have a

saying in Suffolk, England,--

"At Michaelmas time, or a little before,

Half an apple goes to the core."

Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think

that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more

to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they sell in the

shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with

that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the road reminds

me by its fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona,--carrying me forward to

those days when they will be collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the

orchards and about the cider-mills.

A week or two later, as you are going by orchards or gardens, especially

in the evenings, you pass through a little region possessed by the

fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them without price, and without

robbing anybody.

There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and ethereal

quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot be

vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the perfect

flavor of any fruit, and only the god-like among men begin to taste its

ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those fine flavors

of every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to perceive,--just

as we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it. When I see a

particularly mean man carrying a load of fair and fragrant early apples

to market, I seem to see a contest going on between him and his horse,

on the one side, and the apples on the other, and, to my mind, the

apples always gain it. Pliny says that apples are the heaviest of all

things, and that the oxen begin to sweat at the mere sight of a load

of them. Our driver begins to lose his load the moment he tries to

transport them to where they do not belong, that is, to any but the most

beautiful. Though he gets out from time to time, and feels of them, and

thinks they are all there, I see the stream of their evanescent and

celestial qualities going to heaven from his cart, while the pulp and

skin and core only are going to market. They are not apples, but pomace.

Are not these still Iduna's apples, the taste of which keeps the gods

forever young? and think you that they will let Loki or Thjassi carry

them off to Jötunheim, while they grow wrinkled and gray? No, for

Ragnarök, or the destruction of the gods, is not yet.

There is another thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of August

or in September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls; and this

happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In some orchards

you may see fully three-quarters of the whole crop on the ground, lying

in a circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and green,--or, if it is

a hill-side, rolled far down the hill. However, it is an ill wind that

blows nobody any good. All the country over, people are busy picking up

the windfalls, and this will make them cheap for early apple-pies.

In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct on the

trees. I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit

than I remembered to have ever seen before, small yellow apples hanging

over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their weight,

like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new character.

Even the topmost branches, instead of standing erect, spread and drooped

in all directions; and there were so many poles supporting the lower

ones, that they looked like pictures of banian-trees. As an old English

manuscript says, "The mo appelen the tree bereth, the more sche boweth

to the folk."

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or the

swiftest have it. That should be the "going" price of apples.

Between the fifth and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie under

the trees. And perhaps I talk with one who is selecting some choice

barrels to fulfil an order. He turns a specked one over many times

before he leaves it out. If I were to tell what is passing in my mind, I

should say that every one was specked which he had handled; for he rubs

off all the bloom, and those fugacious ethereal qualities leave it. Cool

evenings prompt the farmers to make haste, and at length I see only the

ladders here and there left leaning against the trees.

It would be well, if we accepted these gifts with more joy and

gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of

compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at

least. I find them described chiefly in Brand's "Popular Antiquities."

It appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and their men in

Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in it, and carrying

it in state to the orchard, they salute the apple-trees with much

ceremony, in order to make them bear well the next season." This

salutation consists in "throwing some of the cider about the roots

of the tree, placing bits of the toast on the branches," and then,

"encircling one of the best bearing trees in the orchard, they drink the

following toast three several times:--

'Here's to thee, old apple-tree,

Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,

And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!

Hats-full! caps-full!

Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!

And my pockets full, too! Hurra!'"

Also what was called "apple-howling" used to be practised in various

counties of England on New-Year's eve. A troop of boys visited the

different orchards, and, encircling the apple-trees, repeated the

following words:--

"Stand fast, root! bear well, top!

Pray God sent! us a good howling crop:

Every twig, apples big;

Every bough, apples enow!"

"They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on a cow's

horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with their sticks." This

is called "wassailing" the trees, and is thought by some to be "a relic

of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona."

Herrick sings,--

"Wassaile the trees that they may beare

You many a plum and many a peare;

For more or less fruits they will bring

As you so give them wassailing."

Our poets have as yet a better right to sing of cider than of wine; but

it behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else they

will do no credit to their Muse.

THE WILD APPLE.

So much for the more civilized apple-trees (_urbaniores_, as Pliny

calls them). I love better to go through the old orchards of ungrafted

apple-trees, at whatever season of the year,--so irregularly planted:

sometimes two trees standing close together; and the rows so devious

that you would think that they not only had grown while the owner was

sleeping, but had been set out by him in a somnambulic state. The rows

of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these. But

I now, alas, speak rather from memory than from any recent experience,

such ravages have been made!

Some soils, like a rocky tract called the Easterbrooks Country in my

neighborhood, are so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster in

them without any care, or if only the ground is broken up once a year,

than it will in many places with any amount of care. The owners of this

tract allow that the soil is excellent for fruit, but they say that it

is so rocky that they have not patience to plough it, and that, together

with the distance, is the reason why it is not cultivated. There are,

or were recently, extensive orchards there standing without order. Nay,

they spring up wild and bear well there in the midst of pines, birches,

maples, and oaks. I am often surprised to see rising amid these trees

the rounded tops of apple-trees glowing with red or yellow fruit, in

harmony with the autumnal tints of the forest.

Going up the side of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a

vigorous young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot

up amid the rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it,

uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples were gathered. It

was a rank wild growth, with many green leaves on it still, and made an

impression of thorniness. The fruit was hard and green, but looked as if

it would be palatable in the winter. Some was dangling on the twigs, but

more half-buried in the wet leaves under the tree, or rolled far down

the hill amid the rocks. The owner knows nothing of it. The day was not

observed when it first blossomed, nor when it first bore fruit, unless

by the chickadee. There was no dancing on the green beneath it in its

honor, and now there is no hand to pluck its fruit,--which is only

gnawed by squirrels, as I perceive. It has done double duty,--not only

borne this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And this

is _such_ fruit! bigger than many berries, we must admit, and carried

home will be sound and palatable next spring. What care I for Iduna's

apples so long as I can get these?

When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling fruit,

I respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature's bounty, even though

I cannot eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hill-side has grown an

apple-tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a

natural growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and

use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches,

melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting; but the apple emulates

man's independence and enterprise. It is not simply carried, as I have

said, but, like him, to some extent, it has migrated to this New World,

and is even, here and there, making its way amid the aboriginal trees;

just as the ox and dog and horse sometimes run wild and maintain

themselves.

Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable

position, suggests such thoughts as these, it is so noble a fruit.

THE CRAB.

Nevertheless, _our_ wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who

belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods

from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said, there grows

elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal Crab-Apple, _Malus

coronaria_, "whose nature has not yet been modified by cultivation." It

is found from Western New-York to Minnesota, and southward. Michaux

says that its ordinary height "is fifteen or eighteen feet, but it is

sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet high," and that the large

ones "exactly resemble the common apple-tree." "The flowers are white

mingled with rose-color, and are collected in corymbs." They are

remarkable for their delicious odor. The fruit, according to him, is

about an inch and a half in diameter, and is intensely acid. Yet they

make fine sweetmeats, and also cider of them. He concludes, that, "if,

on being cultivated, it does not yield new and palatable varieties, it

will at least be celebrated for the beauty of its flowers, and for the

sweetness of its perfume."

I never saw the Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through

Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not treated

it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous tree

to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a portion of

Pennsylvania where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of

sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would

distinguish it from European varieties. At last I had occasion to go to

Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to notice from the cars a

tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some

variety of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me,

that this was my long-sought Crab-Apple. It was the prevailing

flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at that season of the

year,--about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one,

and so I was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having

touched one, experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St.

Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be told that I was too far north for the

Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it about eight miles

west of the Falls; touched it and smelled it, and secured a lingering

corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must have been near its

northern limit.

HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS.

But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they

are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple-trees, which,

though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in distant

fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I know of no

trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and which more

sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story we have to

tell. It oftentimes reads thus:--

Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees just

springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,--as the rocky ones

of our Easter-brooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill, in

Sudbury. One or two of these perhaps survive the drought and other

accidents,--their very birthplace defending them against the encroaching

grass and some other dangers, at first.

In two years' time 't had thus

Reached the level of the rocks,

Admired the stretching world,

Nor feared the wandering flocks.

But at this tender age

Its sufferings began;

There came a browsing ox

And cut it down a span.

This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but

the next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a

fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and

twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it, and

express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that brought

you here brought me," he nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it

may be, that he has some title to it.

Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two

short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground

in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby,

until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy

mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest

and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on

account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their

thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the

scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on

the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend with, than

anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to

defend themselves against such foes. In their thorniness, however, there

is no malice, only some malic acid.

The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to--for they maintain

their ground best in a rocky field--are thickly sprinkled with these

little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray mosses or lichens,

and you see thousands of little trees just springing up between them,

with the seed still attached to them.

Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge

with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from

one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the

gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make

fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert

from hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them. Whole

flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three robins' nests in

one which was six feet in diameter.

No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the day

they were planted, but infants still when you consider their development

and the long life before them. I counted the annual rings of some which

were just one foot high, and as wide as high, and found that they were

about twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty! They were so

low that they were unnoticed by the walker, while many of their

contemporaries from the nurseries were already bearing considerable

crops. But what you gain in time is perhaps in this case, too, lost

in power,--that is, in the vigor of the tree. This is their pyramidal

state.

The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more, keeping

them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad

that they become their own fence, when some interior shoot, which their

foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it has not forgotten its

high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph.

Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. Now,

if you have watched the progress of a particular shrub, you will see

that it is no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but that out of its apex

there rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance than an

orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its repressed

energy to these upright parts. In a short time these become a small

tree, an inverted pyramid resting on the apex of the other, so that

the whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The spreading bottom,

having served its purpose, finally disappears, and the generous tree

permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand in its shade, and rub

against and redden its trunk, which has grown in spite of them, and even

to taste a part of its fruit, and so disperse the seed.

Thus the cows create their own shade and food; and the tree, its

hour-glass being inverted, lives a second life, as it were.

It is an important question with some nowadays, whether you should trim

young apple-trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes. The

ox trims them up as high as he can reach, and that is about the right

height, I think.

In spite of wandering kine, and other adverse circumstances, that

despised shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert and shelter from

hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in course of time its harvest,

sincere, though small.

By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen, I frequently

see such a central sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought

it had forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its first crop of small

green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the

bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it, and I make haste to taste the

new and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous varieties

of fruit invented by Van Mons and Knight. This is the system of Van Cow,

and she has invented far more and more memorable varieties than both of

them.

Through what hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though

somewhat small, it may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that

which has grown in a garden,--will perchance be all the sweeter and more

palatable for the very difficulties it has had to contend with. Who

knows but this chance wild fruit, planted by a cow or a bird on some

remote and rocky hill-side, where it is as yet unobserved by man, may be

the choicest of all its kind, and foreign potentates shall hear of it,

and royal societies seek to propagate it, though the virtues of the

perhaps truly crabbed owner of the soil may never be heard of,--at

least, beyond the limits of his village? It was thus the Porter and the

Baldwin grew.

Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every

wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man!

So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial

fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and

only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and

prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect

fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus

spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal

men.

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the

golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed

dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an Herculean labor to pluck

them.

This is one, and the most remarkable way, in which the wild apple is

propagated; but commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods and

swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and grows

with comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods are very tall

and slender. I frequently pluck from these trees a perfectly mild and

tamed fruit. As Palladius says, "_Et injussu consternitur ubere mali_":

And the ground is strewn with the fruit of an unbidden apple-tree.

It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do not bear a valuable

fruit of their own, they are the best stocks by which to transmit to

posterity the most highly prized qualities of others. However, I am not

in search of stocks, but the wild fruit itself, whose fierce gust has

suffered no "inteneration," It is not my

"highest plot

To plant the Bergamot."

THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR.

The time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of

November. They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and they

are still perhaps as beautiful as ever. I make a great account of

these fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth the while to

gather,--wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and inspiriting. The farmer

thinks that he has better in his barrels, but he is mistaken, unless he

has a walker's appetite and imagination, neither of which can he have.

Such as grow quite wild, and are left out till the first of November, I

presume that the owner does not mean to gather. They belong to children

as wild as themselves,--to certain active boys that I know,--to the

wild-eyed woman of the fields, to whom nothing comes amiss, who gleans

after all the world,--and, moreover, to us walkers. We have met with

them, and they are ours. These rights, long enough insisted upon, have

come to be an institution in some old countries, where they have learned

how to live. I hear that "the custom of grippling, which may be called

apple-gleaning, is, or was formerly, practised in Herefordshire. It

consists in leaving a few apples, which are called the gripples, on

every tree, after the general gathering, for the boys, who go with

climbing-poles and bags to collect them."

As for those I speak of, I pluck them as a wild fruit, native to this

quarter of the earth,--fruit of old trees that have been dying ever

since I was a boy and are not yet dead, frequented only by the

woodpecker and the squirrel, deserted now by the owner, who has not

faith enough to look under their boughs. From the appearance of the

tree-top, at a little distance, you would expect nothing but lichens to

drop from it, but your faith is rewarded by finding the ground strewn

with spirited fruit,--some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes,

with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them,--some

containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some,

especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and stones

lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of the

fruit which has been so eagerly sought after in past years.

I have seen no account of these among the "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of

America," though they are more memorable to my taste than the grafted

kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess, when October

and November, when December and January, and perhaps February and March

even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer in my neighborhood, who

always selects the right word, says that "they have a kind of bow-arrow

tang."

Apples for grafting appear to have been selected commonly, not so much

for their spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and

bearing qualities,--not so much for their beauty, as for their fairness

and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of

pomological gentlemen. Their "Favorites" and "None-suches" and

"Seek-no-farthers," when I have fruited them, commonly turn out very

tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively little zest, and

have no real _tang_ nor _smack_ to them.

What if some of these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine

_verjuice_, do they not still belong to the _Pomaceae_, which are

uniformly innocent and kind to our race? I still begrudge them to the

cider-mill. Perhaps they are not fairly ripe yet.

No wonder that these small and high-colored apples are thought to make

the best cider. Loudon quotes from the "Herefordshire Report," that

"apples of a small size are always, if equal in quality, to be preferred

to those of a larger size, in order that the rind and kernel may bear

the greatest proportion to the pulp, which affords the weakest and

most watery juice." And he says, that, "to prove this, Dr. Symonds, of

Hereford, about the year 1800, made one hogshead of cider entirely from

the rinds and cores of apples, and another from the pulp only, when the

first was found of extraordinary strength and flavor, while the latter

was sweet and insipid."

Evelyn says that the "Red-strake" was the favorite cider-apple in his

day; and he quotes one Dr. Newburg as saying, "In Jersey 't is a general

observation, as I hear, that the more of red any apple has in its rind,

the more proper it is for this use. Pale-faced apples they exclude as

much as may be from their cider-vat." This opinion still prevails.

All apples are good in November. Those which the farmer leaves out

as unsalable, and unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are

choicest fruit to the walker. But it is remarkable that the wild apple,

which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or

woods, being brought into the house, has frequently a harsh and crabbed

taste. The Saunterer's Apple not even the saunterer can eat in the

house. The palate rejects it there, as it does haws and acorns, and

demands a tamed one; for there you miss the November air, which is the

sauce it is to be eaten with. Accordingly, when Tityrus, seeing the

lengthening shadows, invites Melibaeus to go home and pass the night

with him, he promises him _mild_ apples and soft chestnuts,--_mitia

poma, castaneae molles_. I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and

spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from

that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full. But perchance,

when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber, I find it

unexpectedly crude,--sour enough to set a squirrel's teeth on edge and

make a jay scream.

These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have

absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly

_seasoned_, and they _pierce_ and _sting_ and _permeate_ us with

their spirit. They must be eaten in _season_, accordingly,--that is,

out-of-doors.

To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is

necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The

out-door air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone to

his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh

and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all

aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers, the wind

rattles the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining leaves, and the

jay is heard screaming around. What is sour in the house a bracing walk

makes sweet. Some of these apples might be labelled, "To be eaten in the

wind."

Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the taste

that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps

one-half of them must be eaten in the house, the other out-doors. One

Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Proceedings of

the Boston Academy, describing an apple-tree in that town "producing

fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple being frequently

sour and the other sweet;" also some all sour, and others all sweet, and

this diversity on all parts of the tree.

There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuct Hill in my town which has to me a

peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three-quarters

tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it smells exactly like

a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and relish it.

I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called

_Prunes sibarelles_, because it is impossible to whistle after having

eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten

in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging

atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and

clearer?

In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated; just

as the wood-chopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle of

a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there and dreams of

summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would make a

student miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold, but rather

it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with temperatures, so with

flavors; as with cold and heat, so with sour and sweet. This natural

raciness, the sours and bitters which the diseased palate refuses, are

the true condiments.

Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate

the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses,

_papillae_ firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily flattened

and tamed.

From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be

reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized

man rejects. The former has the palate of an out-door man. It takes a

savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.

What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of

life, the apple of the world, then!

"Nor is it every apple I desire,

Nor that which pleases every palate best;

'T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,

Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,

Nor that which first beshrewed the name of

wife,

Nor that whose beauty caused the golden

strife:

No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of

life!"

So there is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would

have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not

warrant them to be palatable, if tasted in the house.

THEIR BEAUTY.

Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and

crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming

traits even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed or

sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that the

summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some part of

its sphere. It will have some red stains, commemorating the mornings and

evenings it has witnessed; some dark and rusty blotches, in memory of

the clouds and foggy, mildewy days that have passed over it; and a

spacious field of green reflecting the general face of Nature,--green

even as the fields; or a yellow ground, which implies a milder

flavor,--yellow as the harvest, or russet as the hills.

Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair,--apples not of Discord, but

of Concord! Yet not so rare but that the homeliest may have a share.

Painted by the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, or

crimson, as if their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the

influence of the sun on all sides alike,--some with the faintest pink

blush imaginable,--some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow,

or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from

the stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like meridional lines, on a

straw-colored ground,--some touched with a greenish rust, like a fine

lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or less

confluent and fiery when wet,--and others gnarly, and freckled or

peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a white

ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints

the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red inside, perfused

with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat,--apple of the

Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells and pebbles on the

sea-shore, they must be seen as they sparkle amid the withering leaves

in some dell in the woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie in the

wet grass, and not when they have wilted and faded in the house.

THE NAMING OF THEM.

It would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the hundred

varieties which go to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would it not

tax a man's invention,--no one to be named after a man, and all in the

_lingua vernacula_? Who shall stand godfather at the christening of the

wild apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they

were used, and make the _lingua vernacula_ flag. We should have to call

in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the

wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel

and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant

boy, to our aid.

In 1836 there were in the garden of the London Horticultural Society

more than fourteen hundred distinct sorts. But here are species which

they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which our

Crab might yield to cultivation.

Let us enumerate a few of these. I find myself compelled, after all, to

give the Latin names of some for the benefit of those who live where

English is not spoken,--for they are likely to have a world-wide

reputation.

There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (_Malus sylvatica_); the Blue-Jay

Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (_sylvestrivallis,_)

also in Hollows in Pastures (_campestrivallis_); the Apple that grows

in an old Cellar-Hole (_Malus cellaris_); the Meadow-Apple; the

Partridge-Apple; the Truant's Apple, (_Cessaloris,_) which no boy will

ever go by without knocking off some, however _late_ it may be; the

Saunterer's Apple,--you must lose yourself before you can find the way

to that; the Beauty of the Air (_Decus Aëris_); December-Eating; the

Frozen-Thawed, (_gelato-soluta_) good only in that state; the Concord

Apple, possibly the same with the _Musketaquidensis_; the Assabet Apple;

the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green

Apple (_Malus viridis_);--this has many synonymes; in an imperfect

state, it is the _Cholera morbifera aut dysenterifera, puerulis

dilectissima;_--the Apple which Atalanta stopped to pick up; the

Hedge-Apple (_Malus Sepium_); the Slug-Apple (_limacea_); the

Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown out of the cars;

the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not

to be found in any catalogue,--_Pedestrium Solatium_; also the Apple

where hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna's Apples, and the Apples which

Loki found in the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too

numerous to mention,--all of them good. As Bodaeus exclaims, referring

to the cultivated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so I, adapting

Bodaeus,--

"Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,

An iron voice, could I describe all the forms

And reckon up all the names of these _wild apples_."

THE LAST GLEANING.

By the middle of November the wild apples have lost some of their

brilliancy, and have chiefly fallen. A great part are decayed on the

ground, and the sound ones are more palatable than before. The note

of the chickadee sounds now more distinct, as you wander amid the old

trees, and the autumnal dandelion is half-closed and tearful. But still,

if you are a skilful gleaner, you may get many a pocket-full even of

grafted fruit, long after apples are supposed to be gone out-of-doors. I

know a Blue-Pearmain tree, growing within the edge of a swamp, almost as

good as wild. You would not suppose that there was any fruit left there,

on the first survey, but you must look according to system. Those which

lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or perchance a few

still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the wet leaves.

Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and

the huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices

of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen and

decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the

ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long

since and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself,--a proper kind of

packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere within the circumference of

the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nibbled by

rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and perhaps with a leaf or two

cemented to it, (as Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery's mouldy

cellar,) but still with a rich bloom on it, and at least as ripe and

well kept, if not better than those in barrels, more crisp and lively

than they. If these resources fail to yield anything, I have learned to

look between the bases of the suckers which spring thickly from some

horizontal limb, for now and then one lodges there, or in the very midst

of an alder-clump, where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows

which may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I do not refuse

the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my

steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles from home, I

eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my balance.

I learn from Topsell's Gesner, whose authority appears to be Albertus,

that the following is the way in which the hedgehog collects and carries

home his apples. He says,--"His meat is apples, worms, or grapes: when

he findeth apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth himself upon them,

until he have filled all his prickles, and then carrieth them home to

his den, never bearing above one in his mouth; and if it fortune that

one of them fall off by the way, he likewise shaketh off all the

residue, and walloweth upon them afresh, until they be all settled upon

his back again. So, forth he goeth, making a noise like a cart-wheel;

and if he have any young ones in his nest, they pull off his load

wherewithal he is loaded, eating thereof what they please, and laying up

the residue for the time to come."

THE "FROZEN-THAWED" APPLE.

Toward the end of November, though some of the sound ones are yet more

mellow and perhaps more edible, they have generally, like the leaves,

lost their beauty, and are beginning to freeze. It is finger-cold, and

prudent farmers get in their barrelled apples, and bring you the apples

and cider which they have engaged; for it is time to put them into the

cellar. Perhaps a few on the ground show their red cheeks above the

early snow, and occasionally some even preserve their color and

soundness under the snow throughout the winter. But generally at the

beginning of the winter they freeze hard, and soon, though undecayed,

acquire the color of a baked apple.

Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first

thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite

unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while

sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely

sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich sweet cider,

better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better

acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and your

jaws are the cider-press. Others, which have more substance, are a sweet

and luscious food,--in my opinion of more worth than the pine-apples

which are imported from the West Indies. Those which lately even I

tasted only to repent of it,--for I am semi-civilized,--which the farmer

willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to find have the property of

hanging on like the leaves of the young oaks. It is a way to keep cider

sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first, solid as

stones, and then the rain or a warm winter day to thaw them, and they

will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of

the air in which they hang. Or perchance you find, when you get home,

that those which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and the ice is

turned to cider. But after the third or fourth freezing and thawing they

will not be found so good.

What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South, to this

fruit matured by the cold of the frigid North? These are those crabbed

apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that

I might tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets

with them,--bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the

overflowing juice,--and grow more social with their wine. Was there one

that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks

could not dislodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,--quite

distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and

cider,--and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

* * * * *

The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will

probably become extinct in New England. You may still wander through old

orchards of native fruit of great extent, which for the most part went

to the cider-mill, now all gone to decay. I have heard of an orchard in

a distant town, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down and

lay four feet deep against a wall on the lower side, and this the owner

cut down for fear they should be made into cider. Since the temperance

reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no native

apple-trees, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where

the woods have grown up around them, are set out. I fear that he who

walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of

knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which

he will not know! Notwithstanding the prevalence of the Baldwin and the

Porter, I doubt if so extensive orchards are set out to-day in my town

as there were a century ago, when those vast straggling cider-orchards

were planted, when men both ate and drank apples, when the pomace-heap

was the only nursery, and trees cost nothing but the trouble of setting

them out. Men could afford then to stick a tree by every wall-side and

let it take its chance. I see nobody planting trees to-day in such

out-of-the-way places, along the lonely roads and lanes, and at the

bottom of dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees, and pay a

price for them, they collect them into a plat by their houses, and fence

them in,--and the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to

look for our apples in a barrel.

This is the word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

"Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land!

Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?...

"That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that

which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which

the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.

"Awake, ye drunkards, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine,

because of the new wine! for it is cut off from your mouth.

"For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose

teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great

lion.

"He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree; he hath made it

clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white....

"Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen! howl, O ye vine-dressers!...

"The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languisheth; the

pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the

trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the

sons of men."

* * * * *

LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "CECIL DREEME" AND "JOHN BRENT."

KATAHDIN AND THE PENOBSCOT.

CHAPTER VII.

MOOSEHEAD.

Moosehead Lake is a little bigger than the Lago di Guarda, and

therefore, according to our American standard, rather more important. It

is not very grand, not very picturesque, but considerably better than

no lake,--a meritorious mean; not pretty and shadowy, like a thousand

lakelets all over the land, nor tame, broad, and sham-oceanic, like the

tanks of Niagara. On the west, near its southern end, is a well-intended

blackness and roughness called Squaw Mountain. The rest on that side is

undistinguished pine woods.

Mount Kinneo is midway up the lake, on the east. It is the show-piece of

the region,--the best they can do for a precipice, and really admirably

done. Kinneo is a solid mass of purple flint rising seven hundred feet

upright from the water. By the side of this block could some Archimedes

appear, armed with a suitable "_pou stô_" and a mallet heavy enough,

he might strike fire to the world. Since percussion-guns and friction

cigar-lighters came in, flint has somewhat lost its value; and Kinneo

is of no practical use at present. We cannot allow inutilities in this

world. Where is the Archimedes? He could make a handsome thing of it by

flashing us off with a spark into a new system of things.

Below this dangerous cliff on the lake-bank is the Kinneo House, where

fishermen and sportsmen may dwell, and kill or catch, as skill or

fortune favors. The historical success of all catchers and killers is

well balanced, since men who cannot master facts are always men of

imagination, and it is as easy for them to invent as for the other class

to do. Boston men haunt Kinneo. For a hero who has not skill enough or

imagination enough to kill a moose stands rather in Nowhere with Boston

fashion. The tameness of that pleasant little capital makes its belles

ardent for tales of wild adventure. New-York women are less exacting; a

few of them, indeed, like a dash of the adventurous in their lover; but

most of them are business-women, fighting their way out of vulgarity

into style, and romance is an interruption.

Kinneo was an old station of Iglesias's, in those days when he was

probing New England for the picturesque. When the steamer landed, he

acted as cicerone, and pointed out to me the main object of

interest thereabouts, the dinner-table. We dined with lumbermen and

moose-hunters, scufflingly.

The moose is the lion of these regions. Near Greenville, a gigantic pair

of moose-horns marks a fork in the road. Thenceforth moose-facts and

moose-legends become the staple of conversation. Moose-meat, combining

the flavor of beefsteak and the white of turtle, appears on the table.

Moose-horns with full explanations, so that the buyer can play the part

of hunter, are for sale. Tame mooselings are exhibited. Sportsmen at

Kinneo can choose a _matinée_ with the trout or a _soirée_ with the

moose.

The chief fact of a moose's person is that pair of strange excrescences,

his horns. Like fronds of tree-fern, like great corals or sea-fans,

these great palmated plates of bone lift themselves from his head,

grand, useless, clumsy. A pair of moose-horns overlooks me as I write;

they weigh twenty pounds, are nearly five feet in spread, on the right

horn are nine developed and two undeveloped antlers, the plates are

sixteen inches broad,--a doughty head-piece.

Every year the great, slow-witted animal must renew his head-gear. He

must lose the deformity, his pride, and cultivate another. In spring,

when the first anemone trembles to the vernal breeze, the moose nods

welcome to the wind, and as he nods feels something rattle on his skull.

He nods again, as Homer sometimes did. Lo! something drops. A horn has

dropped, and he stands a bewildered unicorn. For a few days he steers

wild; in this ill-balanced course his lone horn strikes every tree

on this side as he dodges from that side. The unhappy creature is

staggered, body and mind. In what Jericho of the forest can he hide his

diminished head? He flies frantic. He runs amuck through the woods. Days

pass by in gloom, and then comes despair; another horn falls, and he

becomes defenceless; and not till autumn does his brow bear again its

full honors.

I make no apology for giving a few lines to the great event of a moose's

life. He is the hero of those evergreen-woods,--a hero too little

recognized, except by stealthy assassins, meeting him by midnight for

massacre. No one seems to have viewed him in his dramatic character, as

a forest-monarch enacting every year the tragi-comedy of decoronation

and recoronation.

The Kinneo House is head-quarters for moose-hunters. This summer the

waters of Maine were diluvial, the feeding-grounds were swamped. Of this

we took little note: we were in chase of something certain not to

be drowned; and the higher the deluge, the easier we could float to

Katahdin. After dinner we took the steamboat again for the upper end of

the lake.

It was a day of days for sunny summer sailing. Purple haziness curtained

the dark front of Kinneo,--a delicate haze purpled by this black

promontory, but melting blue like a cloud-fall of cloudless sky upon

loftier distant summits. The lake rippled pleasantly, flashing at every

ripple.

Suddenly, "Katahdin!" said Iglesias.

Yes, there was a dim point, the object of our pilgrimage.

Katahdin,--the more I saw of it, the more grateful I was to the three

powers who enabled me to see it: to Nature for building it, to Iglesias

for guiding me to it, to myself for going.

We sat upon the deck and let Katahdin grow,--and sitting, talked of

mountains, somewhat to this effect:--

Mountains are the best things to be seen. Within the keen outline of a

great peak is packed more of distance, of detail, of light and shade, of

color, of all the qualities of space, than vision can get in any other

way. No one who has not seen mountains knows how far the eye can reach.

Level horizons are within cannon-shot. Mountain horizons not only may be

a hundred miles away, but they lift up a hundred miles at length, to be

seen at a look. Mountains make a background against which blue sky

can be seen; between them and the eye are so many miles of visible

atmosphere, domesticated, brought down to the regions of earth, not

resting overhead, a vagueness and a void. Air, blue in full daylight,

rose and violet at sunset, gray like powdered starlight by night, is

collected and isolated by a mountain, so that the eye can comprehend it

in nearer acquaintance. There is nothing so refined as the outline of

a distant mountain: even a rose-leaf is stiff-edged and harsh in

comparison. Nothing else has that definite indefiniteness, that melting

permanence, that evanescing changelessness. Clouds in vain strive to

imitate it; they are made of slighter stuff; they can be blunt or

ragged, but they cannot have that solid positiveness.

Mountains, too, are very stationary,--always at their post. They are

characters of dignity, not without noble changes of mood; but these

changes are not bewildering, capricious shifts. A mountain can be

studied like a picture; its majesty, its grace can be got by heart.

Purple precipice, blue pyramid, cone or dome of snow, it is a simple

image and a positive thought. It is a delicate fact, first, of

beauty,--then, as you approach, a strong fact of majesty and power.

But even in its cloudy, distant fairness there is a concise, emphatic

reality altogether uncloudlike.

Manly men need the wilderness and the mountain. Katahdin is the best

mountain in the wildest wild to be had on this side the continent. He

looked at us encouragingly over the hills. I saw that he was all that

Iglesias, connoisseur of mountains, had promised, and was content to

wait for the day of meeting.

The steamboat dumped us and our canoe on a wharf at the lake-head about

four o'clock. A wharf promised a settlement, which, however, did not

exist. There was population,--one man and one great ox. Following the

inland-pointing nose of the ox, we saw, penetrating the forest, a wooden

railroad. Ox-locomotive, and no other, befitted such rails. The train

was one great go-cart. We packed our traps upon it, roofed them with our

birch, and, without much ceremony of whistling, moved on. As we started,

so did the steamboat. The link between us and the inhabited world grew

more and more attenuated. Finally it snapped, and we were in the actual

wilderness.

I am sorry to chronicle that Iglesias hereupon turned to the ox and said

impatiently,--

"Now, then, bullgine!"

Why a railroad, even a wooden one, here? For this: the Penobscot at this

point approaches within two and a half miles of Moosehead Lake, and over

this portage supplies are taken conveniently for the lumbermen of an

extensive lumbering country above, along the river.

Corduroy railroad, ox-locomotive, and go-cart train up in the pine woods

were a novelty and a privilege. Our cloven-hoofed engine did not whirr

turbulently along, like a thing of wheels. Slow and sure must the

knock-kneed chewer of cuds step from log to log. Creakingly the wain

followed him, pausing and starting and pausing again with groans of

inertia. A very fat ox was this, protesting every moment against his

employment, where speed, his duty, and sloth, his nature, kept him

bewildered by their rival injunctions. Whenever the engine-driver

stopped to pick a huckleberry, the train, self-braking, stopped also,

and the engine took in fuel from the tall grass that grew between the

sleepers. It was the sensation of sloth at its uttermost.

Iglesias and I, meanwhile, marched along and shot the game of the

country, namely, one _Tetrao Canadensis_, one spruce-partridge, making

in all one bird, quite too pretty to shoot with its red and black

plumage. The spruce-partridge is rather rare in inhabited Maine, and

is malignantly accused of being bitter in flesh, and of feeding on

spruce-buds to make itself distasteful. Our bird we found sweetly

berry-fed. The bitterness, if any, was that we had not a brace.

So, at last, in an hour, after shooting one bird and swallowing six

million berries, for the railroad was a shaft into a mine of them, we

came to the terminus. The chewer of cuds was disconnected, and plodded

off to his stable. The go-cart slid down an inclined plane to the river,

the Penobscot.

We paid quite freely for our brief monopoly of the railroad to the

superintendent, engineer, stoker, poker, switch-tender, brakeman,

baggage-master, and every other official in one. But who would grudge

his tribute to the enterprise that opened this narrow vista through

toward the Hyperboreans, and planted these once not crumbling sleepers

and once not rickety rails, to save the passenger a portage? Here,

at Bullgineville, the pluralist railroad-manager had his cabin and

clearing, ox-engine house and warehouse.

To balance these symbols of advance, we found a station of the

rear-guard of another army. An Indian party of two was encamped on the

bank. The fusty sagamore of this pair was lying wounded; his fusty squaw

tended him tenderly, minding, meanwhile, a very witch-like caldron

of savory fume. No skirmish, with actual war-whoop and sheen of real

scalping-knife, had put this prostrate chieftain here _hors du combat_.

He had shot himself cruelly by accident. So he informed us feebly, in a

muddy, guttural _patois_ of Canadian French. This aboriginal meeting was

of great value; it helped to eliminate the railroad.