After all, the Rosicrucians were an ignorant lot. They spent their
days over alembics, cucurbits, and crucibles--yet they grew old. In
our days many men--and a few women--have discovered the Elixir of
Youth--but never indoors. The prescription is a simple one. Mix a
hobby with plenty of sky-air, shake well, and take twice a week. I
know a railroad official who retired when he was seventy. "He'll die
soon," observed his friends kindly. Instead, he began to collect
native orchids from all points of the compass. Now he is too busy
tramping over mountains and through woods and marshes even to think of
dying. Anyway, he would not have time until he has found the
ram's-head and the crane's-bill orchids and finished his monograph on
the _Habenaria_. He will never grow old.
Neither will that other friend of mine who collects fresh-water
pearls, nor the one who makes me visit black-snake and rattlesnake
dens with him every spring, nor those others who spend their time in
collecting butterflies, beetles, wasps, and similar bric-a-brac. As
for those four abandoned oölogists who have hunted with me for years,
they will be young at a hundred. They rank high in their respective
callings. Yet from February, when the great horned owl begins its
nest, until the goldfinch lays her white eggs in July, the four spend
every holiday and vacation hunting birds' nests.
Personally I collect only notes, out-of-door secrets, and little
everyday adventures. Bird-songs, flower-fields, and friendships with
the wild-folk mean far more to me than cabinets of pierced eggs, dried
flowers, stuffed birds, and tanned skins. Nor am I much of a hunter.
When it comes to slaughtering defenseless animals with high-powered
guns, I prefer a position in an abattoir. One can kill more animals in
a day, and with less exertion. Yet my collecting and sporting friends
make allowances for my vagaries and take me with them on their
journeyings. Wherefore it happened that in early March I received a
telegram. "Raven's nest located. Come if you are man enough."
Now a middle-aged lawyer and the father of a family has no business
ravening along the icy and inaccessible cliffs which that gifted fowl
prefers for nursery purposes. I have, however, a maxim of Thoreau
which I furbish up for just such occasions. "A man sits as many risks
as he runs," wrote that wanderer in the woods. Accordingly the next
morning found me two hundred miles to the north, plodding through a
driving snow-storm toward Seven Mountains, with the first man in
recent years to find the nest of a northern raven in Pennsylvania.
For fifteen freezing miles we clambered over and around three of the
seven. By the middle of the afternoon we reached a cliff hidden behind
thickets of rhododendron. In the meantime the snow had changed to a
lashing rain, probably the coldest that has ever fallen on the North
American continent. Ploughing through slush, the black rhododendron
stems twisted around us like wet rubber, and the hollow green leaves
funneled ice-water down our backs and into our ears. Breaking through
the last of the thickets, we at length reached a little brook which
ran along the foot of the cliff. A hundred feet above, out from the
middle of the cliff stretched a long tongue of rock. Over this the
cliff arched like a roof, with a space between which widened toward
the tip of the tongue. In a niche above this cleft a dark mass showed
dimly through the rain.
"The nest!" muttered the Collector hoarsely, pouring a pint or so of
rain-water down my neck from his hat-brim as he bent toward me. I
stared with all my eyes, at last one of the chosen few to see the nest
of a Pennsylvania raven. It was made of large sticks. The fresh broken
ends and the droppings on the cliff-side showed that it was a recent
one. There were no signs of either of the birds. We solemnly removed
our coats and sweaters and prepared for the worst. To me the cliff
looked much like the Matterhorn, only slipperier. The Collector,
however, was most reassuring. He told me that the going looked worse
than it really was, and that, anyway, if I did fall, death would be so
nearly instantaneous as to involve little if any suffering.
Thus encouraged, I followed him gruntingly up a path which had
evidently been made by a chamois or an ibex. At last I found myself
perched on a shelf of stone about the width of my hand. The Collector,
who was above me on an even smaller foothold, took this opportunity to
tell me that the rare Allegheny cave-rat was found on this cliff, and
nearly fell off his perch trying to point out to me a crevice where he
had once seen the mass of sticks, stones, leaves, feathers, and bones
with which these versatile animals barricade their passage-ways. I
refused to turn my head. That day I was risking my life for ravens,
not rats. Above us was the long, rough tongue of rock. Below us, a far
hundred feet, the brook wound its way through snow-covered boulders.
Again the Collector led the way. Hooking both arms over the tongue of
rock above him, he drew himself up until his chest rested on the edge,
and then, sliding toward the precipice, managed to wriggle up in some
miraculous way without slipping off. From the top of the tongue he
clambered up to the niche where the nest was, calling down to me to
follow. Accordingly I left my shelf and hung sprawlingly on the
tongue; but there was no room to push my way up between it and the
rock-roof above.
"Throw your legs straight out," counseled the Collector from above,
"and let yourself slide."
I tried conscientiously, but it was impossible. My sedentary,
unadventurous legs simply would not whirl out into space. At last,
under the jeers of my friend, I shut my eyes and, kicking out
mightily, found myself sliding toward eternity. Just before I reached
it, under the Collector's bellowed instructions, I thrust my left arm
up as far as I could, and found a hand-hold on the slippery rock.
After getting my breath, I managed to wriggle up through the crevice
and lay safe on the top of the tongue. The niche above was not large
enough for us both, so the Collector came down while I took his place.
I was lashed by a freezing rain, my numb hands were cut and bleeding,
and there were ten weary miles still ahead. Yet that moment was worth
all that it cost. There is an indescribable fascination and triumph in
sharing a secret with the wild-folk, which can be understood only by
the initiate. The living naturalists who had looked into the home of
the Northern raven in Pennsylvania could be counted on the thumb and
first three fingers of one hand. At last the little finger belonged to
me.
The deep cup of the nest was about one foot in diameter and over a
yard across on the outside. It was firmly anchored on the shelf of
rock, the structure being built into the crevices and made entirely of
dead oak branches, some of them fully three quarters of an inch in
diameter. It looked from a distance like an enormous crow's nest. The
cup itself was some six inches deep, and lined with red and white
deer-hair and some long black hairs which were probably those of a
skunk. Inside, it had a little damp green moss; while the rim was made
of green birch twigs bruised and hackled by the beaks of the builders.
On this day, March 9, 1918, there were no eggs, although in a previous
year the Collector had found two as early as February 25, when the
cliffs were covered with snow; and on March 5, of another year he
collected a full set of five fresh eggs, which I afterwards examined
in his collection. The birds had built a nest the year before, without
laying. This fact, with the absence of eggs this year, convinced the
Collector that the birds were sterile from age. During the last years
of their long life, which is supposed to approach a century, a pair of
ravens will sometimes build, with pathetic pains, nest after nest
which are never occupied by eggs. The Collector promised to show me a
set, however, the next day in another nest.
At last it was time to start down. The Collector, who was waiting on
his shelf, warned me that the descent was more difficult than the
climb which I had just lived through, as it was necessary to slide
some six feet backwards to the shelf from which we started. As I
looked down the cliff-side I decided to remain with the ravens. It was
not until the Collector promised most solemnly to catch me, that I at
last let go and found myself back on the shelf with him. Then came
another wonderful moment. "Crrruck, crrruck, crrruck," sounded
hoarsely from the valley below--a note like that of a deep-voiced crow
with a bad cold.
"Hurry!" urged the Collector; "it's one of the old birds coming back."
I claim to have hurried as much as any man of my age could be expected
to do, but by the time I had reached the path the wary raven had
disappeared. I clambered down the cliff while the Collector
reproached me for my senile slowness. We stopped to rest at the foot,
and I was just telling him that the Cornishmen hate the raven because
to their ears he always cries "Corpse, corpse!" when suddenly the bird
itself came back again. It flew across the valley and alighted on a
tree-top by the opposite cliff, looking like a monster crow, being
about one-third longer. One might mistake a crow for a raven, but
never a raven for a crow. If there be any doubt about the bird, it is
always safe to set it down as a crow.
The flight of the raven, which consisted of two flaps and a soar, and
its long tail resembling that of an enormous grackle, were its most
evident field-marks.
For long we sat and watched the wary birds, until, chilled through by
the driving rain, we started to cover the ten miles that lay between
us and the house of Squire McMahon, a mountain friend of the
Collector, where we planned to pass the night. On the way the
Collector told me that he saw his first raven while wandering through
the mountains in the spring of 1909, and how he trailed and hunted and
watched until, in 1910, he found the first nest. Since then he had
found twelve. His system was a simple one. Selecting from a gazetteer
a list of mountain villages with wild names, such as Bear Creek,
Paddy's Mountain, and Panther Run, he would write to the postmasters
for the names of noted hunters and woodsmen. From them he would secure
more or less accurate information about the haunts of ravens, which
usually frequent only the loneliest and most inaccessible parts of the
mountains.
The trail led through deep forests and up and across mountains, and
was so covered with ice and snow as to be difficult going. At one
point the Collector showed me a place where he had been walking years
ago, when he suddenly became conscious that he was being followed by
something or somebody. At a point where the trail doubled on itself,
he ran back swiftly and silently, just in time to see a
bay-lynx--which had been trailing him, as those big cats sometimes
will--dive into a nearby thicket. Anon he cheered the way with snake
stories, for Seven Mountains in summer swarm with rattlesnakes and
copperheads.
By the time he had finished it was dark, and I thought with a great
longing of food and fire--especially fire. It did not seem possible to
be so cold and still live. In the very nick of time, for me at least,
we caught sight of the lamplight streaming from the windows of the
Squire's house. Dripping, chilled, tired, and starving, we burst into
Mrs. McMahon's immaculate kitchen and were treated by the old couple
like a pair of long-lost sons. In less than two minutes our
waterlogged shoes were off, our wet coats and sogged sweaters spread
out to dry, and we sat huddled over a glowing stove while Mrs. McMahon
fried fish, made griddle-cakes, and brewed hot tea simultaneously and
with a swiftness that just saved two lives. We ate and ate and ate and
ate, and then, in a huge feather-bed, we slept and slept and slept
and slept. Long after I have forgotten the difference between a tort
and a contract, and whether A. Edward Newton or Marie Corelli wrote
the "Amenities," that dinner and that sleep will stand out in my
memory.
The next morning we started off again in a driving snowstorm, to look
at another nest some ten miles farther on. The first bird we met was a
prairie horned lark flying over the valley, with its curious tossing,
mounting flight, like a bunch of thistle-down. It differs from the
more common horned, or shore, lark by having a white instead of a
yellow throat and eye-line; and it nests in the mountain meadows in
upper Pennsylvania, while its larger brother breeds in the far north.
Noon found us at a deer camp. Through the uncurtained windows we could
see the mounted body of a golden eagle, which, after stalking and
destroying one by one a whole flock of wild turkeys, had come to an
ignoble end while gorged on the carcass of a dead deer. The man who
captured it by throwing his coat over its head thought at first that
it was a turkey buzzard, which southern bird, curiously enough, finds
its way through the valleys up into these northern mountains. In fact,
the Collector once found a buzzard's nest just across a ravine from
the nest of a raven. Beyond the camp, on the other side of a rushing
torrent, we found another raven's nest swaying in the gale, in the
very top of a slender forty-foot white pine, the only raven's nest the
Collector had ever found in a tree. It was deserted, and we reached
home late that night with frost-bitten faces and ears, and without a
sight of the eggs of the northern raven.
The next day we took a train, and traveled forty miles down the river
to where, on a cliff overhanging the water, a pair of ravens had
nested for the last fifty years. There we found numerous old nests,
but never a trace of any that were fresh. There too we found a
magnificent wild turkey hanging dead in a little apple tree; it had
come to a miserable end by catching the toes of one foot in between
two twigs in such a way that it could not release itself. The bright
red color of its legs distinguished it from a tame turkey. The
Collector confided to me that the ambition of his life was to find the
nest of a wild turkey, which is the rarest of all Pennsylvania nests.
Next to it from a collecting standpoint come the nests of the Northern
raven, pileated woodpecker, and Blackburnian warbler, in the order
named.
* * * * *
March 12, 1919, found me again on a raven hunt with the Collector.
Before sunrise I was dropped from a sleeper at a little mountain
station set in a hill country full of broad fields, swift streams, and
leafless trees, flanked by dark belts of pines and hemlocks. Beyond
the hills was raven-land, lonely, wind-swept, full of lavender and
misty-purple mountains, with now and then a gap showing in their
ramparts. It was in these gaps that the ravens nested, always on the
north side, farthest from the sun.
Nearby was Treaster's Valley, which old Dan Treaster won from a pack
of black wolves before the Revolution. When he lay a-dying, three
quarters of a century later, the wailing howl of a wolf-pack sounded
outside his cabin, although wolves had been gone from the Valley for
fifty years. Old Dan sat up with the death-sweat on his forehead and
grinned. "They've come to see me off," he whispered and fell back
dead.
[Illustration: "THE YOUNG RAVENS SHALL NEITHER LACK NOR SUFFER
HUNGER"]
They bred hunters in that Valley. Peter Penz, the Indian fighter, who
celebrated his ninetieth birthday by killing a red bear, came from
there. So did Jacob Quiggle, who killed a maned panther one winter
night, under the light of a wind-swept moon, with his famous gun,
Black Sam. Over on Panther's Run not ten miles away, lived Solomon
Miller, who shot the last wood-bison, and died at the age of
eighty-eight, clapping his hands and shouting the chorus of a
hunting-song.
As the light began to show in the eastern sky, came the first
bird-notes of the day. The caw of a crow, a snatch of song-sparrow
melody, the chirp of a robin, the fluted alto note of a blue-bird, and
the squeal of a red-tailed hawk sounded before the sun came up.
A change of trains, and I met the Collector, as enthusiastic as ever.
Already that year he had found six ravens' nests with eggs in them,
but the one he had promised to show me was the best of the lot. It was
located in Poe's Gap, where local tradition hath it that the poet
wooed, not unsuccessfully, a mountain girl, and wrote "The Raven" in
her cabin. On the way to the Gap we heard and saw nineteen different
kinds of birds, including siskin, fox sparrows, and killdeer, and saw
a buzzard sail on black-fringed wings over the peaks. On a farmer's
barn we saw a goshawk nailed, its blue-gray back and finely penciled
breast unmistakable, even after the winter storms.
As we entered the Gap, patches of snow showed here and there, and a
mad mountain brook of foaming gray water came frothing and raging to
meet us. When we were full two hundred and fifty yards away from the
nest, the female raven flapped and soared away. The nest itself was
only thirty feet from the ground, on a shelf protected by a protruding
ledge, some ten feet down from the top of the cliffs. Rigging a rope
to a tree, I managed to swarm up and look at last on the eggs of a
Northern raven. They were three in number, a full clutch. The number
ranges from three to five, very rarely six, with one instance of
seven. The eggs themselves were half as large again as those of a
crow, and all different in coloration. One was light-blue-flecked and
speckled with brown and lavender; another heavily marked with lavender
and greenish-brown; while the last was of a solid greenish-brown
color.
The nest itself faced the Gap, and from it one could look clear across
the forest to the settled country beyond, while behind the cliff
stretched a range of low, unexplored mountains. The nest itself was
made of smaller sticks than the one I had seen over at Seven
Mountains, and had a double lining of brown and white deer-hair, a
fresh lining having been laid over that of the year before. As we
climbed to the nest, the ravens soared near, giving only the hoarse
"Crrruck." They have also a soft love-note, which cannot be heard
fifty yards away and sounds something like the syllables
"Ga-gl-gl-gli." As they soared near us, their plumage shone like black
glass, and we could see the long tapered feathers of the neck swell
whenever either of them croaked. They had a peculiar trick of gliding
side by side and suddenly touching wings, overlapping each other for
an instant. While we watched them, a red-shouldered hawk unwarily
approached the Gap. In an instant, the male raven was upon him, and
there was a sharp fight. The Buteo was not to be driven away easily,
and made brave play with beak and talons; but he never had a chance.
The raven glided round and round him with wonderful speed and
smoothness, driving in blow after blow with his heavy, punishing beak,
until the hawk was glad to escape.
For long and long I watched the dark, wise mysterious birds circle
through the blue sky. As I sat in their eyrie, I could look far, far
across the forests and the ranges of hills, to where the ploughed
fields began. Perhaps that poet whose heart-strings were a lute had
looked from that same raven-cliff before he went back to die among the
tame folk, and wished that he could stay in wild-folk land where he
belonged.