northern parts of both hemispheres, and places its eyrie on high
precipitous rocks. A pair built on an inaccessible shelf of rock
along the Hudson for eight successive years. A squad of
Revolutionary soldiers, also, as related by Audubon, found a nest
along this river, and had an adventure with the bird that came near
costing one of their number his life. His comrades let him down by a
rope to secure the eggs or young, when he was attacked by the female
eagle with such fury that he was obliged to defend himself with his
knife. In doing so, by a misstroke, he nearly severed the rope that
held him, and was drawn up by a single strand from his perilous
position.
The bald eagle, also, builds on high rocks, according to Audubon,
though Wilson describes the nest of one which he saw near Great Egg
Harbor, in the top of a large yellow pine. It was a vast pile of
sticks, sods, sedge, grass, reeds, etc., five or six feet high by
four broad, and with little or no concavity. It had been used for
many years, and he was told that the eagles made it a sort of home
or lodging-place in all seasons.
The eagle in all cases uses one nest, with more or less repair, for
several years. Many of our common birds do the same. The birds may
be divided, with respect to this and kindred points, into five
general classes. First, those that repair or appropriate the last
year's nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested
flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others. Secondly,
those that build anew each season, though frequently rearing more
than one brood in the same nest. Of these the phoebe-bird is a
well-known example. Thirdly, those that build a new nest for each
brood, which includes by far the greatest number of species.
Fourthly, a limited number that make no nest of their own, but
appropriate the abandoned nests of other birds. Finally, those who
use no nest at all, but deposit their eggs in the sand, which is the
case with a large number of aquatic fowls.
1866.
VI
THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS
On looking at the southern and more distant Catskills from the
Hudson River on the east, or on looking at them from the west from
some point of vantage in Delaware County, you see, amid the group of
mountains, one that looks like the back and shoulders of a gigantic
horse. The horse has got his head down grazing; the shoulders are
high, and the descent from them down his neck very steep; if he were
to lift up his head, one sees that it would be carried far above all
other peaks, and that the noble beast might gaze straight to his
peers in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains. But the lowered
head never comes up; some spell or enchantment keeps it down there
amid the mighty herd; and the high round shoulders and the smooth
strong back of the steed are alone visible. The peak to which I
refer is Slide Mountain, the highest of the Catskills by some two
hundred feet, and probably the most inaccessible; certainly the
hardest to get a view of, it is hedged about so completely by other
peaks,--the greatest mountain of them all, and apparently the least
willing to be seen; only at a distance of thirty or forty miles is
it seen to stand up above all other peaks. It takes its name from a
landslide which occurred many years ago down its steep northern
side, or down the neck of the grazing steed. The mane of spruce and
balsam fir was stripped away for many hundred feet, leaving a long
gray streak visible from afar.
Slide Mountain is the centre and the chief of the southern
Catskills. Streams flow from its base, and from the base of its
subordinates, to all points of the compass,--the Rondout and the
Neversink to the south; the Beaverkill to the west; the Esopus to
the north; and several lesser streams to the east. With its summit
as the centre, a radius of ten miles would include within the circle
described but very little cultivated land; only a few poor, wild
farms in some of the numerous valleys. The soil is poor, a mixture
of gravel and clay, and is subject to slides. It lies in the valleys
in ridges and small hillocks, as if dumped there from a huge cart.
The tops of the southern Catskills are all capped with a kind of
conglomerate, or "pudden stone,"--a rock of cemented quartz pebbles
which underlies the coal measures. This rock disintegrates under the
action of the elements, and the sand and gravel which result are
carried into the valleys and make up the most of the soil. From the
northern Catskills, so far as I know them, this rock has been swept
clean. Low down in the valleys the old red sandstone crops out,
and, as you go west into Delaware County, in many places it alone
remains and makes up most of the soil, all the superincumbent rock
having been carried away.
Slide Mountain had been a summons and a challenge to me for many
years. I had fished every stream that it nourished, and had camped
in the wilderness on all sides of it, and whenever I had caught a
glimpse of its summit I had promised myself to set foot there before
another season should pass. But the seasons came and went, and my
feet got no nimbler, and Slide Mountain no lower, until finally, one
July, seconded by an energetic friend, we thought to bring Slide to
terms by approaching him through the mountains on the east. With a
farmer's son for guide we struck in by way of Weaver Hollow, and,
after a long and desperate climb, contented ourselves with the
Wittenberg, instead of Slide. The view from the Wittenberg is in
many respects more striking, as you are perched immediately above a
broader and more distant sweep of country, and are only about two
hundred feet lower. You are here on the eastern brink of the
southern Catskills, and the earth falls away at your feet and curves
down through an immense stretch of forest till it joins the plain of
Shokan, and thence sweeps away to the Hudson and beyond. Slide is
southwest of you, six or seven miles distant, but is visible only
when you climb into a treetop. I climbed and saluted him, and
promised to call next time.
We passed the night on the Wittenberg, sleeping on the moss, between
two decayed logs, with balsam boughs thrust into the ground and
meeting and forming a canopy over us. In coming off the mountain in
the morning we ran upon a huge porcupine, and I learned for the
first time that the tail of a porcupine goes with a spring like a
trap. It seems to be a set-lock; and you no sooner touch with the
weight of a hair one of the quills than the tail leaps up in a most
surprising manner, and the laugh is not on your side. The beast
cantered along the path in my front, and I threw myself upon him,
shielded by my roll of blankets. He submitted quietly to the
indignity, and lay very still under my blankets, with his broad tail
pressed close to the ground. This I proceeded to investigate, but
had not fairly made a beginning when it went off like a trap, and my
hand and wrist were full of quills. This caused me to let up on the
creature, when it lumbered away till it tumbled down a precipice.
The quills were quickly removed from my hand, when we gave chase.
When we came up to him, he had wedged himself in between the rocks
so that he presented only a back bristling with quills, with the
tail lying in ambush below. He had chosen his position well, and
seemed to defy us. After amusing ourselves by repeatedly springing
his tail and receiving the quills in a rotten stick, we made a
slip-noose out of a spruce root, and, after much manoeuvring, got
it over his head and led him forth. In what a peevish, injured tone
the creature did complain of our unfair tactics! He protested and
protested, and whimpered and scolded like some infirm old man
tormented by boys. His game after we led him forth was to keep
himself as much as possible in the shape of a ball, but with two
sticks and the cord we finally threw him over on his back and
exposed his quill-less and vulnerable under side, when he fairly
surrendered and seemed to say, "Now you may do with me as you like."
His great chisel-like teeth, which are quite as formidable as those
of the woodchuck, he does not appear to use at all in his defense,
but relies entirely upon his quills, and when those fail him, he is
done for.
[Illustration: THE WITTENBERG FROM WOODLAND VALLEY]
After amusing ourselves with him awhile longer, we released him and
went on our way. The trail to which we had committed ourselves led
us down into Woodland Valley, a retreat which so took my eye by its
fine trout brook, its superb mountain scenery, and its sweet
seclusion, that I marked it for my own, and promised myself a return
to it at no distant day. This promise I kept, and pitched my tent
there twice during that season. Both occasions were a sort of laying
siege to Slide, but we only skirmished with him at a distance; the
actual assault was not undertaken. But the following year,
reinforced by two other brave climbers, we determined upon the
assault, and upon making it from this the most difficult side. The
regular way is by Big Ingin Valley, where the climb is comparatively
easy, and where it is often made by women. But from Woodland Valley
only men may essay the ascent. Larkins is the upper inhabitant, and
from our camping-ground near his clearing we set out early one June
morning.
One would think nothing could be easier to find than a big mountain,
especially when one is encamped upon a stream which he knows springs
out of its very loins. But for some reason or other we had got an
idea that Slide Mountain was a very slippery customer and must be
approached cautiously. We had tried from several points in the
valley to get a view of it, but were not quite sure we had seen its
very head. When on the Wittenberg, a neighboring peak, the year
before, I had caught a brief glimpse of it only by climbing a dead
tree and craning up for a moment from its topmost branch. It would
seem as if the mountain had taken every precaution to shut itself
off from a near view. It was a shy mountain, and we were about to
stalk it through six or seven miles of primitive woods, and we
seemed to have some unreasonable fear that it might elude us. We had
been told of parties who had essayed the ascent from this side, and
had returned baffled and bewildered. In a tangle of primitive
woods, the very bigness of the mountain baffles one. It is all
mountain; whichever way you turn--and one turns sometimes in such
cases before he knows it--the foot finds a steep and rugged ascent.
The eye is of little service; one must be sure of his bearings and
push boldly on and up. One is not unlike a flea upon a great shaggy
beast, looking for the animal's head; or even like a much smaller
and much less nimble creature,--he may waste his time and steps, and
think he has reached the head when he is only upon the rump. Hence I
questioned our host, who had several times made the ascent, closely.
Larkins laid his old felt hat upon the table, and, placing one hand
upon one side of it and the other upon the other, said: "There Slide
lies, between the two forks of the stream, just as my hat lies
between my two hands. David will go with you to the forks, and then
you will push right on up." But Larkins was not right, though he had
traversed all those mountains many times over. The peak we were
about to set out for did not lie between the forks, but exactly at
the head of one of them; the beginnings of the stream are in the
very path of the slide, as we afterward found. We broke camp early
in the morning, and with our blankets strapped to our backs and
rations in our pockets for two days, set out along an ancient and in
places an obliterated bark road that followed and crossed and
recrossed the stream. The morning was bright and warm, but the wind
was fitful and petulant, and I predicted rain. What a forest
solitude our obstructed and dilapidated wood-road led us through!
five miles of primitive woods before we came to the forks, three
miles before we came to the "burnt shanty," a name merely,--no
shanty there now for twenty-five years past. The ravages of the
barkpeelers were still visible, now in a space thickly strewn with
the soft and decayed trunks of hemlock-trees, and overgrown with
wild cherry, then in huge mossy logs scattered through the beech and
maple woods. Some of these logs were so soft and mossy that one
could sit or recline upon them as upon a sofa.
But the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquizing in such musical
tones there amid the moss-covered rocks and boulders. How clean it
looked, what purity! Civilization corrupts the streams as it
corrupts the Indian; only in such remote woods can you now see a
brook in all its original freshness and beauty. Only the sea and the
mountain forest brook are pure; all between is contaminated more or
less by the work of man. An ideal trout brook was this, now
hurrying, now loitering, now deepening around a great boulder, now
gliding evenly over a pavement of green-gray stone and pebbles; no
sediment or stain of any kind, but white and sparkling as
snow-water, and nearly as cool. Indeed, the water of all this
Catskill region is the best in the world. For the first few days,
one feels as if he could almost live on the water alone; he cannot
drink enough of it. In this particular it is indeed the good Bible
land, "a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that
spring out of valleys and hills."
Near the forks we caught, or thought we caught, through an opening,
a glimpse of Slide. Was it Slide? was it the head, or the rump, or
the shoulder of the shaggy monster we were in quest of? At the forks
there was a bewildering maze of underbrush and great trees, and the
way did not seem at all certain; nor was David, who was then at the
end of his reckoning, able to reassure us. But in assaulting a
mountain, as in assaulting a fort, boldness is the watchword. We
pressed forward, following a line of blazed trees for nearly a mile,
then, turning to the left, began the ascent of the mountain. It was
steep, hard climbing. We saw numerous marks of both bears and deer;
but no birds, save at long intervals the winter wren flitting here
and there, and darting under logs and rubbish like a mouse.
Occasionally its gushing, lyrical song would break the silence.
After we had climbed an hour or two, the clouds began to gather, and
presently the rain began to come down. This was discouraging; but we
put our backs up against trees and rocks, and waited for the shower
to pass.
"They were wet with the showers of the mountain, and embraced the
rocks for want of shelter," as they did in Job's time. But the
shower was light and brief, and we were soon under way again. Three
hours from the forks brought us out on the broad level back of the
mountain upon which Slide, considered as an isolated peak, is
reared. After a time we entered a dense growth of spruce which
covered a slight depression in the table of the mountain. The moss
was deep, the ground spongy, the light dim, the air hushed. The
transition from the open, leafy woods to this dim, silent, weird
grove was very marked. It was like the passage from the street into
the temple. Here we paused awhile and ate our lunch, and refreshed
ourselves with water gathered from a little well sunk in the moss.
The quiet and repose of this spruce grove proved to be the calm that
goes before the storm. As we passed out of it, we came plump upon
the almost perpendicular battlements of Slide. The mountain rose
like a huge, rock-bound fortress from this plain-like expanse. It
was ledge upon ledge, precipice upon precipice, up which and over
which we made our way slowly and with great labor, now pulling
ourselves up by our hands, then cautiously finding niches for our
feet and zigzagging right and left from shelf to shelf. This
northern side of the mountain was thickly covered with moss and
lichens, like the north side of a tree. This made it soft to the
foot, and broke many a slip and fall. Everywhere a stunted growth of
yellow birch, mountain-ash, and spruce and fir opposed our progress.
The ascent at such an angle with a roll of blankets on your back is
not unlike climbing a tree: every limb resists your progress and
pushes you back; so that when we at last reached the summit, after
twelve or fifteen hundred feet of this sort of work, the fight was
about all out of the best of us. It was then nearly two o'clock, so
that we had been about seven hours in coming seven miles.
Here on the top of the mountain we overtook spring, which had been
gone from the valley nearly a month. Red clover was opening in the
valley below, and wild strawberries just ripening; on the summit the
yellow birch was just hanging out its catkins, and the claytonia, or
spring-beauty, was in bloom. The leaf-buds of the trees were just
bursting, making a faint mist of green, which, as the eye swept
downward, gradually deepened until it became a dense, massive cloud
in the valleys. At the foot of the mountain the clintonia, or
northern green lily, and the low shadbush were showing their
berries, but long before the top was reached they were found in
bloom. I had never before stood amid blooming claytonia, a flower of
April, and looked down upon a field that held ripening strawberries.
Every thousand feet elevation seemed to make about ten days'
difference in the vegetation, so that the season was a month or more
later on the top of the mountain than at its base. A very pretty
flower which we began to meet with well up on the mountain-side was
the painted trillium, the petals white, veined with pink.
The low, stunted growth of spruce and fir which clothes the top of
Slide has been cut away over a small space on the highest point,
laying open the view on nearly all sides. Here we sat down and
enjoyed our triumph. We saw the world as the hawk or the balloonist
sees it when he is three thousand feet in the air. How soft and
flowing all the outlines of the hills and mountains beneath us
looked! The forests dropped down and undulated away over them,
covering them like a carpet. To the east we looked over the near-by
Wittenberg range to the Hudson and beyond; to the south,
Peak-o'-Moose, with its sharp crest, and Table Mountain, with its
long level top, were the two conspicuous objects; in the west, Mt.
Graham and Double Top, about three thousand eight hundred feet each,
arrested the eye; while in our front to the north we looked over the
top of Panther Mountain to the multitudinous peaks of the northern
Catskills. All was mountain and forest on every hand. Civilization
seemed to have done little more than to have scratched this rough,
shaggy surface of the earth here and there. In any such view, the
wild, the aboriginal, the geographical greatly predominate. The
works of man dwindle, and the original features of the huge globe
come out. Every single object or point is dwarfed; the valley of the
Hudson is only a wrinkle in the earth's surface. You discover with
a feeling of surprise that the great thing is the earth itself,
which stretches away on every hand so far beyond your ken.
The Arabs believe that the mountains steady the earth and hold it
together; but they have only to get on the top of a high one to see
how insignificant mountains are, and how adequate the earth looks to
get along without them. To the imaginative Oriental people,
mountains seemed to mean much more than they do to us. They were
sacred; they were the abodes of their divinities. They offered their
sacrifices upon them. In the Bible, mountains are used as a symbol
of that which is great and holy. Jerusalem is spoken of as a holy
mountain. The Syrians were beaten by the Children of Israel because,
said they, "their gods are gods of the hills; therefore were they
stronger than we." It was on Mount Horeb that God appeared to Moses
in the burning bush, and on Sinai that He delivered to him the law.
Josephus says that the Hebrew shepherds never pasture their flocks
on Sinai, believing it to be the abode of Jehovah. The solitude of
mountain-tops is peculiarly impressive, and it is certainly easier
to believe the Deity appeared in a burning bush there than in the
valley below. When the clouds of heaven, too, come down and envelop
the top of the mountain,--how such a circumstance must have
impressed the old God-fearing Hebrews! Moses knew well how to
surround the law with the pomp and circumstance that would inspire
the deepest awe and reverence.
But when the clouds came down and enveloped us on Slide Mountain,
the grandeur, the solemnity, were gone in a twinkling; the
portentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing but base fog that wet
us and extinguished the world for us. How tame, and prosy, and
humdrum the scene instantly became! But when the fog lifted, and we
looked from under it as from under a just-raised lid, and the eye
plunged again like an escaped bird into those vast gulfs of space
that opened at our feet, the feeling of grandeur and solemnity
quickly came back.
The first want we felt on the top of Slide, after we had got some
rest, was a want of water. Several of us cast about, right and left,
but no sign of water was found. But water must be had, so we all
started off deliberately to hunt it up. We had not gone many hundred
yards before we chanced upon an ice-cave beneath some rocks,--vast
masses of ice, with crystal pools of water near. This was good luck,
indeed, and put a new and a brighter face on the situation.
Slide Mountain enjoys a distinction which no other mountain in the
State, so far as is known, does,--it has a thrush peculiar to
itself. This thrush was discovered and described by Eugene P.
Bicknell, of New York, in 1880, and has been named Bicknell's
thrush. A better name would have been Slide Mountain thrush, as the
bird so far has been found only on this mountain.[1] I did not see
or hear it upon the Wittenberg, which is only a few miles distant,
and only two hundred feet lower. In its appearance to the eye among
the trees, one would not distinguish it from the gray-cheeked thrush
of Baird, or the olive-backed thrush, but its song is totally
different. The moment I heard it I said, "There is a new bird, a new
thrush," for the quality of all thrush songs is the same. A moment
more, and I knew it was Bicknell's thrush. The song is in a minor
key, finer, more attenuated, and more under the breath than that of
any other thrush. It seemed as if the bird was blowing in a
delicate, slender, golden tube, so fine and yet so flute-like and
resonant the song appeared. At times it was like a musical whisper
of great sweetness and power. The birds were numerous about the
summit, but we saw them nowhere else. No other thrush was seen,
though a few times during our stay I caught a mere echo of the
hermit's song far down the mountain-side. A bird I was not prepared
to see or to hear was the black-poll warbler, a bird usually found
much farther north, but here it was, amid the balsam firs, uttering
its simple, lisping song.
[Footnote 1: Bicknell's thrush turns out to be the more
southern form of the gray-cheeked thrush, and is found on the
higher mountains of New York and New England.]
The rocks on the tops of these mountains are quite sure to attract
one's attention, even if he have no eye for such things. They are
masses of light reddish conglomerate, composed of round wave-worn
quartz pebbles. Every pebble has been shaped and polished upon some
ancient seacoast, probably the Devonian. The rock disintegrates
where it is most exposed to the weather, and forms a loose sandy and
pebbly soil. These rocks form the floor of the coal formation, but
in the Catskill region only the floor remains; the superstructure
has never existed, or has been swept away; hence one would look for
a coal mine here over his head in the air, rather than under his
feet.
This rock did not have to climb up here as we did; the mountain
stooped and took it upon its back in the bottom of the old seas, and
then got lifted up again. This happened so long ago that the memory
of the oldest inhabitants of these parts yields no clew to the time.