"You're not scared, are you?" he inquired; while Tin, who had hurried
up with a gunny-sack, regarded me reproachfully.
"Certainly not," I assured him indignantly, "but I don't want to be
selfish. Let Tin do it."
"No," said Jim firmly, "you're company. Tin can pick up rattlesnakes
any day."
"Well, how about my friend?" I rejoined weakly.
The Ornithologist, who had been watching the scene from the far
background, spoke up for himself.
"I wouldn't touch that damn snake," he said earnestly, "for eleven
million dollars."
At this profanity the rattlesnake started another paroxysm of
struggling, while his rattle sounded like an alarm-clock. When he
stopped to rest, the Ornithologist raised his price to an even
billion--in gold. It was evident that I was the white man's hope. It
would never do to let two members of a conquered race see a pale-face
falter. Remembering Deerslayer at the stake, Daniel Boone, and sundry
other brave white men without a cross, I set my teeth, gripped the
rough, cold, scaly body just back of the crotched stick, and lifted.
The great snake's black, fixed, devilish eyes looked into mine. If, in
this world, there are peep-holes into hell, they are found in the eyes
of an enraged rattlesnake. As he came clear of the ground, he coiled
round my arm to the elbow, so that the rattles sounded not a foot from
my ear. Although the rattlesnake is not a constrictor, and there was
no real danger, yet under the touch of his body my arm quivered like a
tuning-fork.
"What makes your arm shake so?" queried Jim, watching me critically.
"It's probably rheumatism," I assured him.
Suddenly, under my grip, the snake's mouth opened, showing on either
side of the upper jaw ridges of white gum. From these suddenly flashed
the movable fangs which are always folded back until ready for use.
They were hollow and of a glistening white. Halfway down on the side
of each was a tiny hole, from which the yellow venom slowly oozed. I
began tremulously to unwind my unwelcome armlet, while Tin waited with
the open bag.
"Be sure you take your hand away quick after you drop him in," advised
Jim.
"Don't you worry about that," I replied; "no man will ever get his
hand away quicker than I'm going to."
[Illustration: THE KING OF THE FOREST--THE BANDED RATTLESNAKE]
Whereupon I unwound the rattling coils from my arm, and then broke all
speed records in removing my hand from the neighborhood of that snake.
This was my first introduction to the King of the Dark Places, the
grim timber rattlesnake, the handsomest of all the thirteen varieties
found within the United States.
On my way back from the den it was Jim Pan who pointed out to me on
the lower slope of the mountain the beautiful showy orchid (_Orchis
spectabilis_). Between two oblong shining green leaves grew a loose
spike of purple-pink and white butterfly blossoms. This is the first
of the orchids to appear, and no more exquisite or beautiful flower
could head the procession which stretches from May until September. I
find this flower but seldom, usually because I am not in the
hill-country early enough, although once I found a perfect flower in
bloom as late as Decoration Day, a left-over from the first spring
flowers.
It was Jim, too, that day, who quite appropriately showed me the
rattlesnake plantain (_Goodyera pubescens_), with its rosette of green
leaves heavily veined with white, from the centre of which in late
summer grows a spike of crowded, greenish-white flowers. Under the
doctrine of signatures, these leaves are still thought by many to be a
sure cure for the bite of a rattlesnake. Personally, I would rather
rely on a sharp knife and permanganate of potash. In the same group as
the rattlesnake plantain are several varieties of lady's tresses,
which grow in every damp meadow in midsummer and early fall. Little
spikes of greenish-white flowers they are, growing out of what looks
like a twisted or braided stem. Of them all the most interesting to me
is the grass-leaved lady's tresses (_Gyrostachys præcox_), where the
flowers grow round and round the stem in a perfect spiral.
As I went on with my hunting, I learned that not all the members of
the orchis family are beautiful. There is the coral root, with tiny
dull brownish-purple flowers, which one finds growing in dry woods,
often near colonies of the Indian pipe. The green and the
ragged-fringed orchids are other disappointing members. Yet, to a
confirmed collector, even these poor relations of the family are full
of interest. In fact, the second rarest orchid of our American
list--the celebrated crane-fly orchid (_Tipularia unifolia_)--has a
series of insignificant greenish-purple blossoms which look as much
like mosquitoes or flies as anything else, and can be detected only
with the greatest difficulty. Yet I am planning to take a journey of
several hundred miles this very summer on the off-chance of seeing one
of these flowers. Nearly as rare is the strange ram's-head
lady's-slipper (_Cypripedium arietinum_), the rarest of all the
cypripedia and belonging to the same family as the glorious moccasin
flower and queen flower. The lip of the ram's-head consists of a
strange greenish pouch with purple streaks, shaped like the head of a
ram.
There are scores of other odd, often lovely, and usually rare, members
of the great orchis family, which can be met with from May to
September. There is the beautiful golden whip-poor-will's shoe, in two
sizes (_Cypripedium hirsutum_, and _Cypripedium parviflorum_), and
those lovely nymphs, rose-purple Arethusa (_Arethusa bulbosa_), and
Calypso (_Calypso borealis_), with her purple blossom varied with pink
and shading to yellow.
One of the fascinations of orchid-hunting is the fact that you may
suddenly light upon a strange orchid growing in a place which you have
passed for years. Such a happening came to me the day when I first
found the rose pogonia (_Pogonia ophioglossoides_). I was following a
cow-path through the hard hack pastures which I had traveled perhaps a
hundred times before. Suddenly, as I came to the slope of the upper
pasture, growing in the wet bank of the deep-cut trail, my eye caught
sight of a little flower of the purest rose-pink, the color of the
peach-blossom, with a deeply fringed drooping lip, the whole flower
springing from a slender stem with oval, grass-like leaves. To me it
had a fragrance like almonds, although others have found in it the
scent of sweet violets or of fresh raspberries. It is the pogonia
family which includes the rarest of all of our orchids, the almost
unknown smaller whorled pogonia (_Pogonia affinis_). Few indeed have
been the botanists who have seen even a pressed specimen of this
strange flower.
Two weeks after I found the rose pogonia, I came again to visit her.
To my astonishment and delight, by her side was growing another
orchid, like some purple-pink butterfly which had alighted on a long
swaying stem. It was no other than the beautiful grass-pink
(_Limodorum tuberosum_), which blooms in July, while the pogonia comes
out in late June. The grass-pink has from two to six blossoms on each
stem, and the yellow lip is above instead of below the flower, as in
the case of most orchids. Years later I was to find this orchid
growing by scores in the pine-barrens.
Last, but by no means least, is the great genus _Habenaria_--the
exquisite fringed orchids. Purple, white, gold, green--they wear all
these colors. He who has never seen either the large or the small
purple fringed orchid growing in the June or July meadows, or the
flaming yellow fringed orchid all orange and gold in the August
meadows, has still much for which to live.
It was with an orchid of this genus that I had my most recent
adventure. I had traveled with the Botanist into the heart of the
pine-barrens. There may be places where more flowers and rarer flowers
and sweeter flowers grow than in these barrens, but if so, the
Botanist and I have never found the spot. From the early spring, when
the water freezes in the hollow leaves of the pitcher-plant, to the
last gleam of the orange polygala in the late fall, we are always
finding something rare and new. On that August day we followed a dim
path that led through thickets of scrub-oak and sweet pepper-bush. By
its side grew clumps of deer-grass, with its purple-pink petals and
masses of orange-colored stamens. Sometimes the path would disappear
from sight in masses of hudsonia and sand-myrtle. Everywhere above the
blueberry bushes flamed the regal Turk's-cap lily, with its curved
fire-red petals. On high the stalks towered above a tangle of lesser
plants bearing great candelabra of glorious blossoms.
Finally, we came to a little ditch which some forgotten
cranberry-grower had dug through the barrens to a long-deserted bog.
On its side grew the rare thread-leafed sundew, with its long
thread-like leaf covered with tiny red hairs and speckled thick with
glittering drops of dew; while here and there little insects, which
had alighted on the sweet, fatal drops, were enmeshed in the
entangling hairs. Well above the line of strangled insects on which it
fed, a pink blossom smiled unconcernedly. Like the attractive lady
mentioned in Proverbs, her house goes down into the chambers of death.
As we followed the dike, the air was sweet with the perfume of white
alder. The long stream of brown cedar-water was starred white with
gleaming, fragrant water-lilies. In a marsh by the ditch grew clumps
of cotton-grass or pussytoes, each stem of which bore a tuft of soft
brown wool, like the down which a mother rabbit pulls from her breast
when she lines her nest for her babies.
At last we came to the abandoned cranberry bog. Suddenly the Botanist
jumped into the ditch, splashed his way across, and disappeared in the
bog, waving his arms over his head. I found him on his knees in the
wet sphagnum moss, chanting ecstatically the mystic word
"Blephariglottis." In front of him, on a green stem, was clustered a
mass of little flowers of incomparable whiteness, with fringed lips
and long spikes. One petal bent like a canopy over the brown stamens,
while the other two flared out on either side, like the wings of tiny
white butterflies. It was the white-fringed orchid (_Habenaria
blephariglottis_). Beside her whiteness even the snowy petals of the
water-lily and the white alder showed yellow tones. Like El Nath among
the stars, the white fringed orchid is the standard of whiteness for
the flowers.
Three great blue herons flew over our heads, folded their wings, and
alighted not thirty yards away--an unheard-of proceeding for this wary
bird. A Henslow sparrow sang his abrupt and, to us, almost unknown
song. The Botanist neither saw nor heard. All the way home he was in a
blissful daze, and when I said good-bye to him at the station, he only
murmured happily "Blephariglottis."
[Illustration: THE GREAT BLUE HERON AT BREAKFAST]
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