the top of the mountain at the head of the valley, three quarters
of a mile away? It is like a fly moving across an illuminated
surface. A distant mellow bay floats to us, and we know it is the
hound. He picked up the trail of the fox half an hour since, where
he had crossed the ridge early in the morning, and now he has routed
him and Reynard is steering for the Big Mountain. We press on and
attain the shoulder of the range, where we strike a trail two or
three days old of some former hunters, which leads us into the woods
along the side of the mountain. We are on the first plateau before
the summit; the snow partly supports us, but when it gives way and
we sound it with our legs, we find it up to our hips. Here we enter
a white world indeed. It is like some conjurer's trick. The very
trees have turned to snow. The smallest branch is like a cluster of
great white antlers. The eye is bewildered by the soft fleecy
labyrinth before it. On the lower ranges the forests were entirely
bare, but now we perceive the summit of every mountain about us runs
up into a kind of arctic region where the trees are loaded with
snow. The beginning of this colder zone is sharply marked all around
the horizon; the line runs as level as the shore line of a lake or
sea; indeed, a warmer aerial sea fills all the valleys, sub-merging
the lower peaks, and making white islands of all the higher ones.
The branches bend with the rime. The winds have not shaken it down.
It adheres to them like a growth. On examination I find the
branches coated with ice, from which shoot slender spikes and
needles that penetrate and hold the cord of snow. It is a new kind
of foliage wrought by the frost and the clouds, and it obscures the
sky, and fills the vistas of the woods nearly as much as the myriad
leaves of summer. The sun blazes, the sky is without a cloud or a
film, yet we walk in a soft white shade. A gentle breeze was blowing
on the open crest of the mountain, but one could carry a lighted
candle through these snow-curtained and snow-canopied chambers. How
shall we see the fox if the hound drives him through this white
obscurity? But we listen in vain for the voice of the dog and press
on. Hares' tracks were numerous. Their great soft pads had left
their imprint everywhere, sometimes showing a clear leap of ten
feet. They had regular circuits which we crossed at intervals. The
woods were well suited to them, low and dense, and, as we saw,
liable at times to wear a livery whiter than their own.
The mice, too, how thick their tracks were, that of the white-footed
mouse being most abundant; but occasionally there was a much finer
track, with strides or leaps scarcely more than an inch apart. This
is perhaps the little shrew-mouse of the woods, the body not more
than an inch and a half long, the smallest mole or mouse kind known
to me. Once, while encamping in the woods, one of these tiny shrews
got into an empty pail standing in camp, and died before morning,
either from the cold, or in despair of ever getting out of the pail.
At one point, around a small sugar maple, the mice-tracks are
unusually thick. It is doubtless their granary; they have beech-nuts
stored there, I'll warrant. There are two entrances to the cavity of
the tree,--one at the base, and one seven or eight feet up. At the
upper one, which is only just the size of a mouse, a squirrel has
been trying to break in. He has cut and chiseled the solid wood to
the depth of nearly an inch, and his chips strew the snow all about.
He knows what is in there, and the mice know that he knows; hence
their apparent consternation. They have rushed wildly about over the
snow, and, I doubt not, have given the piratical red squirrel a
piece of their minds. A few yards away the mice have a hole down
into the snow, which perhaps leads to some snug den under the
ground. Hither they may have been slyly removing their stores while
the squirrel was at work with his back turned. One more night and he
will effect an entrance: what a good joke upon him if he finds the
cavity empty! These native mice are very provident, and, I imagine,
have to take many precautions to prevent their winter stores being
plundered by the squirrels, who live, as it were, from hand to
mouth.
We see several fresh fox-tracks, and wish for the hound, but there
are no tidings of him. After half an hour's floundering and
cautiously picking our way through the woods, we emerge into a
cleared field that stretches up from the valley below, and just laps
over the back of the mountain. It is a broad belt of white that
drops down and down till it joins other fields that sweep along the
base of the mountain, a mile away. To the east, through a deep
defile in the mountains, a landscape in an adjoining county lifts
itself up, like a bank of white and gray clouds.
When the experienced fox-hunter comes out upon such an eminence as
this, he always scrutinizes the fields closely that lie beneath him,
and it many times happens that his sharp eye detects Reynard asleep
upon a rock or a stone wall, in which case, if he be armed with a
rifle and his dog be not near, the poor creature never wakens from
his slumber. The fox nearly always takes his nap in the open fields,
along the sides of the ridges, or under the mountain, where he can
look down upon the busy farms beneath and hear their many sounds,
the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle, the cackling of hens, the
voices of men and boys, or the sound of travel upon the highway. It
is on that side, too, that he keeps the sharpest lookout, and the
appearance of the hunter above and behind him is always a surprise.
[Illustration: THE FOX-HUNTER AND HIS HOUND]
We pause here, and, with alert ears turned toward the Big Mountain
in front of us, listen for the dog. But not a sound is heard. A
flock of snow buntings pass high above us, uttering their contented
twitter, and their white forms seen against the intense blue give
the impression of large snowflakes drifting across the sky. I hear a
purple finch, too, and the feeble lisp of the redpoll. A shrike (the
first I have seen this season) finds occasion to come this way also.
He alights on the tip of a dry limb, and from his perch can see into
the valley on both sides of the mountain. He is prowling about for
chickadees, no doubt, a troop of which I saw coming through the
wood. When pursued by the shrike, the chickadee has been seen to
take refuge in a squirrel-hole in a tree. Hark! Is that the hound,
or doth expectation mock the eager ear? With open mouths and bated
breaths we listen. Yes, it is old "Singer;" he is bringing the fox
over the top of the range toward Butt End, the _Ultima Thule_ of the
hunters' tramps in this section. In a moment or two the dog is lost
to hearing again. We wait for his second turn; then for his third.
"He is playing about the summit," says my companion.
"Let us go there," say I, and we are off.
More dense snow-hung woods beyond the clearing where we begin our
ascent of the Big Mountain,--a chief that carries the range up
several hundred feet higher than the part we have thus far
traversed. We are occasionally to our hips in the snow, but for the
most part the older stratum, a foot or so down, bears us; up and up
we go into the dim, muffled solitudes, our hats and coats powdered
like millers'. A half-hour's heavy tramping brings us to the broad,
level summit, and to where the fox and hound have crossed and
recrossed many times. As we are walking along discussing the matter,
we suddenly hear the dog coming straight on to us. The woods are so
choked with snow that we do not hear him till he breaks up from
under the mountain within a hundred yards of us.
"We have turned the fox!" we both exclaim, much put out.
Sure enough, we have. The dog appears in sight, is puzzled a moment,
then turns sharply to the left, and is lost to eye and to ear as
quickly as if he had plunged into a cave. The woods are, indeed, a
kind of cave,--a cave of alabaster, with the sun shining upon it. We
take up positions and wait. These old hunters know exactly where to
stand.
"If the fox comes back," said my companion, "he will cross up there
or down here," indicating two points not twenty rods asunder.
We stood so that each commanded one of the runways indicated. How
light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig
beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a
great fuss and clatter,--all for my benefit, I suspected. All about
me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It was a
cemetery of drift boulders. There! that is the hound. Does his voice
come across the valley from the spur off against us, or is it on our
side down under the mountain? After an interval, just as I am
thinking the dog is going away from us along the opposite range, his
voice comes up astonishingly near. A mass of snow falls from a
branch, and makes one start; but it is not the fox. Then through the
white vista below me I catch a glimpse of something red or yellow,
yellowish red or reddish yellow; it emerges from the lower ground,
and, with an easy, jaunty air, draws near. I am ready and just in
the mood to make a good shot. The fox stops just out of range and
listens for the hound. He looks as bright as an autumn leaf upon the
spotless surface. Then he starts on, but he is not coming to me, he
is going to the other man. Oh, foolish fox, you are going straight
into the jaws of death! My comrade stands just there beside that
tree. I would gladly have given Reynard the wink, or signaled to
him, if I could. It did seem a pity to shoot him, now he was out of
my reach. I cringe for him, when crack goes the gun! The fox
squalls, picks himself up, and plunges over the brink of the
mountain. The hunter has not missed his aim, but the oil in his gun,
he says, has weakened the strength of his powder. The hound, hearing
the report, comes like a whirlwind and is off in hot pursuit. Both
fox and dog now bleed,--the dog at his heels, the fox from his
wounds.
In a few minutes there came up from under the mountain that long,
peculiar bark which the hound always makes when he has run the fox
in, or when something new and extraordinary has happened. In this
instance he said plainly enough, "The race is up, the coward has
taken to his hole, ho-o-o-le." Plunging down in the direction of the
sound, the snow literally to our waists, we were soon at the spot, a
great ledge thatched over with three or four feet of snow. The dog
was alternately licking his heels and whining and berating the fox.
The opening into which the latter had fled was partially closed,
and, as I scraped out and cleared away the snow, I thought of the
familiar saying, that so far as the sun shines in, the snow will
blow in. The fox, I suspect, has always his house of refuge, or
knows at once where to flee to if hard pressed. This place proved to
be a large vertical seam in the rock, into which the dog, on a
little encouragement from his master, made his way. I thrust my head
into the ledge's mouth, and in the dim light watched the dog. He
progressed slowly and cautiously till only his bleeding heels were
visible. Here some obstacle impeded him a few moments, when he
entirely disappeared and was presently face to face with the fox and
engaged in mortal combat with him. It is a fierce encounter there
beneath the rocks, the fox silent, the dog very vociferous. But
after a time the superior weight and strength of the latter prevails
and the fox is brought to light nearly dead. Reynard winks and eyes
me suspiciously, as I stroke his head and praise his heroic defense;
but the hunter quickly and mercifully puts an end to his fast-ebbing
life. His canine teeth seem unusually large and formidable, and the
dog bears the marks of them in many deep gashes upon his face and
nose. His pelt is quickly stripped off, revealing his lean, sinewy
form.
The fox was not as poor in flesh as I expected to see him, though
I'll warrant he had tasted very little food for days, perhaps for
weeks. How his great activity and endurance can be kept up, on the
spare diet he must of necessity be confined to, is a mystery. Snow,
snow everywhere, for weeks and for months, and intense cold, and no
henroost accessible, and no carcass of sheep or pig in the
neighborhood! The hunter, tramping miles and leagues through his
haunts, rarely sees any sign of his having caught anything. Rarely,
though, in the course of many winters, he may have seen evidence of
his having surprised a rabbit or a partridge in the woods. He no
doubt at this season lives largely upon the memory (or the fat) of
the many good dinners he had in the plentiful summer and fall.
As we crossed the mountain on our return, we saw at one point
blood-stains upon the snow, and as the fox-tracks were very thick
on and about it, we concluded that a couple of males had had an
encounter there, and a pretty sharp one. Reynard goes a-wooing in
February, and it is to be presumed that, like other dogs, he is a
jealous lover. A crow had alighted and examined the blood-stains,
and now, if he will look a little farther along, upon a flat rock he
will find the flesh he was looking for. Our hound's nose was so
blunted now, speaking without metaphor, that he would not look at
another trail, but hurried home to rest upon his laurels.
III
PHASES OF FARM LIFE
I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the
best, is country life. Where country life is safe and enjoyable,
where many of the conveniences and appliances of the town are joined
to the large freedom and large benefits of the country, a high state
of civilization prevails. Is there any proper country life in Spain,
in Mexico, in the South American States? Man has always dwelt in
cities, but he has not always in the same sense been a dweller in
the country. Rude and barbarous people build cities. Hence,
paradoxical as it may seem, the city is older than the country.
Truly, man made the city, and after he became sufficiently
civilized, not afraid of solitude, and knew on what terms to live
with nature, God promoted him to life in the country. The
necessities of defense, the fear of enemies, built the first city,
built Athens, Rome, Carthage, Paris. The weaker the law, the
stronger the city. After Cain slew Abel he went out and built a
city, and murder or the fear of murder, robbery or the fear of
robbery, have built most of the cities since. Penetrate into the
heart of Africa, and you will find the people, or tribes, all
living in villages or little cities. You step from the jungle or the
forest into the town; there is no country. The best and most hopeful
feature in any people is undoubtedly the instinct that leads them to
the country and to take root there, and not that which sends them
flocking to the town and its distractions.
The lighter the snow, the more it drifts; and the more frivolous the
people, the more they are blown by one wind or another into towns
and cities.
The only notable exception I recall to city life preceding country
life is furnished by the ancient Germans, of whom Tacitus says that
they had no cities or contiguous settlements. "They dwell scattered
and separate, as a spring, a meadow, or a grove may chance to invite
them. Their villages are laid out, not like ours [the Romans] in
rows of adjoining buildings, but every one surrounds his house with
a vacant space, either by way of security, or against fire, or
through ignorance of the art of building."
These ancient Germans were indeed true countrymen. Little wonder
that they overran the empire of the city-loving Romans, and finally
sacked Rome itself. How hairy and hardy and virile they were! In the
same way is the more fresh and vigorous blood of the country always
making eruptions into the city. The Goths and Vandals from the woods
and the farms,--what would Rome do without them, after all? The
city rapidly uses men up; families run out, man becomes
sophisticated and feeble. A fresh stream of humanity is always
setting from the country into the city; a stream not so fresh flows
back again into the country, a stream for the most part of jaded and
pale humanity. It is arterial blood when it flows in, and venous
blood when it comes back.
A nation always begins to rot first in its great cities, is indeed
perhaps always rotting there, and is saved only by the antiseptic
virtues of fresh supplies of country blood.
* * * * *
But it is not of country life in general that I am to speak, but of
some phases of farm life, and of farm life in my native State.
Many of the early settlers of New York were from New England,
Connecticut perhaps sending out the most. My own ancestors were from
the latter State. The Connecticut emigrant usually made his first
stop in our river counties, Putnam, Dutchess, or Columbia. If he
failed to find his place there, he made another flight to Orange, to
Delaware, or to Schoharie County, where he generally stuck. But the
State early had one element introduced into its rural and farm life
not found farther east, namely, the Holland Dutch. These gave
features more or less picturesque to the country that are not
observable in New England. The Dutch took root at various points
along the Hudson, and about Albany and in the Mohawk valley, and
remnants of their rural and domestic architecture may still be seen
in these sections of the State. A Dutch barn became proverbial. "As
broad as a Dutch barn" was a phrase that, when applied to the person
of a man or woman, left room for little more to be said. The main
feature of these barns was their enormous expansion of roof. It was
a comfort to look at them, they suggested such shelter and
protection. The eaves were very low and the ridge-pole very high.
Long rafters and short posts gave them a quaint, short-waisted,
grandmotherly look. They were nearly square, and stood very broad
upon the ground. Their form was doubtless suggested by the damper
climate of the Old World, where the grain and hay, instead of being
packed in deep solid mows, used to be spread upon poles and exposed
to the currents of air under the roof. Surface and not cubic
capacity is more important in these matters in Holland than in this
country. Our farmers have found that, in a climate where there is so
much weather as with us, the less roof you have the better. Roofs
will leak, and cured hay will keep sweet in a mow of any depth and
size in our dry atmosphere.
The Dutch barn was the most picturesque barn that has been built,
especially when thatched with straw, as they nearly all were, and
forming one side of an inclosure of lower roofs or sheds also
covered with straw, beneath which the cattle took refuge from the
winter storms. Its immense, unpainted gable, cut with holes for the
swallows, was like a section of a respectable-sized hill, and its
roof like its slope. Its great doors always had a hood projecting
over them, and the doors themselves were divided horizontally into
upper and lower halves; the upper halves very frequently being left
open, through which you caught a glimpse of the mows of hay, or the
twinkle of flails when the grain was being threshed.
The old Dutch farmhouses, too, were always pleasing to look upon.
They were low, often made of stone, with deep window-jambs and great
family fireplaces. The outside door, like that of the barn, was
always divided into upper and lower halves. When the weather
permitted, the upper half could stand open, giving light and air
without the cold draught over the floor where the children were
playing that our wide-swung doors admit. This feature of the Dutch
house and barn certainly merits preservation in our modern
buildings.
The large, unpainted timber barns that succeeded the first Yankee
settlers' log stables were also picturesque, especially when a
lean-to for the cow-stable was added, and the roof carried down with
a long sweep over it; or when the barn was flanked by an open shed
with a hayloft above it, where the hens cackled and hid their
nests, and from the open window of which the hay was always hanging.
Then the great timbers of these barns and the Dutch barn, hewn from
maple or birch or oak trees from the primitive woods, and put in
place by the combined strength of all the brawny arms in the
neighborhood when the barn was raised,--timbers strong enough and
heavy enough for docks and quays, and that have absorbed the odors
of the hay and grain until they look ripe and mellow and full of the
pleasing sentiment of the great, sturdy, bountiful interior! The
"big beam" has become smooth and polished from the hay that has been
pitched over it, and the sweaty, sturdy forms that have crossed it.
One feels that he would like a piece of furniture--a chair, or a
table, or a writing-desk, a bedstead, or a wainscoting--made from
these long-seasoned, long-tried, richly toned timbers of the old
barn. But the smart-painted, natty barn that follows the humbler
structure, with its glazed windows, its ornamented ventilator and
gilded weather vane,--who cares to contemplate it? The wise human
eye loves modesty and humility; loves plain, simple structures;
loves the unpainted barn that took no thought of itself, or the
dwelling that looks inward and not outward; is offended when the
farm-buildings get above their business and aspire to be something
on their own account, suggesting, not cattle and crops and plain
living, but the vanities of the town and the pride of dress and
equipage.
Indeed, the picturesque in human affairs and occupations is always
born of love and humility, as it is in art or literature; and it
quickly takes to itself wings and flies away at the advent of pride,
or any selfish or unworthy motive. The more directly the farm savors
of the farmer, the more the fields and buildings are redolent of
human care and toil, without any thought of the passer-by, the more
we delight in the contemplation of it.
It is unquestionably true that farm life and farm scenes in this
country are less picturesque than they were fifty or one hundred
years ago. This is owing partly to the advent of machinery, which
enables the farmer to do so much of his work by proxy, and hence
removes him farther from the soil, and partly to the growing
distaste for the occupation among our people. The old settlers--our
fathers and grandfathers--loved the farm, and had no thoughts above
it; but the later generations are looking to the town and its
fashions, and only waiting for a chance to flee thither. Then
pioneer life is always more or less picturesque; there is no room
for vain and foolish thoughts; it is a hard battle, and the people
have no time to think about appearances. When my grandfather and
grandmother came into the country where they reared their family and
passed their days, they cut a road through the woods and brought
all their worldly gear on a sled drawn by a yoke of oxen. Their
neighbors helped them build a house of logs, with a roof of
black-ash bark and a floor of hewn white-ash plank. A great stone
chimney and fireplace--the mortar of red clay--gave light and
warmth, and cooked the meat and baked the bread, when there was any
to cook or to bake. Here they lived and reared their family, and
found life sweet. Their unworthy descendant, yielding to the
inherited love of the soil, flees the city and its artificial ways,
and gets a few acres in the country, where he proposes to engage in
the pursuit supposed to be free to every American citizen,--the
pursuit of happiness. The humble old farmhouse is discarded, and a
smart, modern country-house put up. Walks and roads are made and
graveled; trees and hedges are planted; the rustic old barn is
rehabilitated; and, after it is all fixed, the uneasy proprietor
stands off and looks, and calculates by how much he has missed the
picturesque, at which he aimed. Our new houses undoubtedly have
greater comforts and conveniences than the old; and, if we could
keep our pride and vanity in abeyance and forget that all the world
is looking on, they might have beauty also.
The man that forgets himself, he is the man we like; and the
dwelling that forgets itself, in its purpose to shelter and protect
its inmates and make them feel at home in it, is the dwelling that
fills the eye. When you see one of the great cathedrals, you know
that it was not pride that animated these builders, but fear and
worship; but when you see the house of the rich farmer, or of the
millionaire from the city, you see the pride of money and the
insolence of social power.
Machinery, I say, has taken away some of the picturesque features of
farm life. How much soever we may admire machinery and the faculty
of mechanical invention, there is no machine like a man; and the
work done directly by his hands, the things made or fashioned by
them, have a virtue and a quality that cannot be imparted by
machinery. The line of mowers in the meadows, with the straight
swaths behind them, is more picturesque than the "Clipper" or
"Buckeye" mower, with its team and driver. So are the flails of the
threshers, chasing each other through the air, more pleasing to the
eye and the ear than the machine, with its uproar, its choking
clouds of dust, and its general hurly-burly.