CHAPTER V

THE SCENERY OF QUEBEC; AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE

About twelve o'clock this day, being in the Lower Town, I looked up at

the signal-gun by the flagstaff on Cape Diamond, and saw a soldier up

in the heavens there making preparations to fire it,--both he and the

gun in bold relief against the sky. Soon after, being warned by the

boom of the gun to look up again, there was only the cannon in the

sky, the smoke just blowing away from it, as if the soldier, having

touched it off, had concealed himself for effect, leaving the sound to

echo grandly from shore to shore, and far up and down the river. This

answered the purpose of a dinner-horn.

There are no such restaurants in Quebec or Montreal as there are in

Boston. I hunted an hour or two in vain in this town to find one, till

I lost my appetite. In one house, called a restaurant, where lunches

were advertised, I found only tables covered with bottles and glasses

innumerable, containing apparently a sample of every liquid that has

been known since the earth dried up after the flood, but no scent of

solid food did I perceive gross enough to excite a hungry mouse. In

short, I saw nothing to tempt me there, but a large map of Canada

against the wall. In another place I once more got as far as the

bottles, and then asked for a bill of fare; was told to walk up

stairs; had no bill of fare, nothing but fare. "Have you any pies or

puddings?" I inquired, for I am obliged to keep my savageness in check

by a low diet. "No, sir; we've nice mutton-chop, roast beef,

beefsteak, cutlets," and so on. A burly Englishman, who was in the

midst of the siege of a piece of roast beef, and of whom I have never

had a front view to this day, turned half round, with his mouth half

full, and remarked, "You'll find no pies nor puddings in Quebec, sir;

they don't make any here." I found that it was even so, and therefore

bought some musty cake and some fruit in the open market-place. This

market-place by the waterside, where the old women sat by their tables

in the open air, amid a dense crowd jabbering all languages, was the

best place in Quebec to observe the people; and the ferry-boats,

continually coming and going with their motley crews and cargoes,

added much to the entertainment. I also saw them getting water from

the river, for Quebec is supplied with water by cart and barrel. This

city impressed me as wholly foreign and French, for I scarcely heard

the sound of the English language in the streets. More than three

fifths of the inhabitants are of French origin; and if the traveler

did not visit the fortifications particularly, he might not be

reminded that the English have any foothold here; and, in any case, if

he looked no farther than Quebec, they would appear to have planted

themselves in Canada only as they have in Spain at Gibraltar; and he

who plants upon a rock cannot expect much increase. The novel sights

and sounds by the waterside made me think of such ports as Boulogne,

Dieppe, Rouen, and Havre-de-Grâce, which I have never seen; but I

have no doubt that they present similar scenes. I was much amused from

first to last with the sounds made by the charette and caleche

drivers. It was that part of their foreign language that you heard the

most of,--the French they talked to their horses,--and which they

talked the loudest. It was a more novel sound to me than the French of

conversation. The streets resounded with the cries, "_Qui donc!_"

"_Marche tôt!_" I suspect that many of our horses which came from

Canada would prick up their ears at these sounds. Of the shops, I was

most attracted by those where furs and Indian works were sold, as

containing articles of genuine Canadian manufacture. I have been told

that two townsmen of mine, who were interested in horticulture,

traveling once in Canada, and being in Quebec, thought it would be a

good opportunity to obtain seeds of the real Canada crookneck squash.

So they went into a shop where such things were advertised, and

inquired for the same. The shopkeeper had the very thing they wanted.

"But are you sure," they asked, "that these are the genuine Canada

crookneck?" "Oh, yes, gentlemen," answered he, "they are a lot which I

have received directly from Boston." I resolved that my Canada

crookneck seeds should be such as had grown in Canada.

Too much has not been said about the scenery of Quebec. The

fortifications of Cape Diamond are omnipresent. They preside, they

frown over the river and surrounding country. You travel ten, twenty,

thirty miles up or down the river's banks, you ramble fifteen miles

amid the hills on either side, and then, when you have long since

forgotten them, perchance slept on them by the way, at a turn of the

road or of your body, there they are still, with their geometry

against the sky. The child that is born and brought up thirty miles

distant, and has never traveled to the city, reads his country's

history, sees the level lines of the citadel amid the cloud-built

citadels in the western horizon, and is told that that is Quebec. No

wonder if Jacques Cartier's pilot exclaimed in Norman French, "Que

bec!" (What a beak!) when he saw this cape, as some suppose. Every

modern traveler involuntarily uses a similar expression. Particularly

it is said that its sudden apparition on turning Point Levi makes a

memorable impression on him who arrives by water. The view from Cape

Diamond has been compared by European travelers with the most

remarkable views of a similar kind in Europe, such as from Edinburgh

Castle, Gibraltar, Cintra, and others, and preferred by many. A main

peculiarity in this, compared with other views which I have beheld, is

that it is from the ramparts of a fortified city, and not from a

solitary and majestic river cape alone, that this view is obtained. I

associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing air,

which may be peculiar to that season of the year, in which the blue

flowers of the succory and some late goldenrods and buttercups on the

summit of Cape Diamond were almost my only companions,--the former

bluer than the heavens they faced. Yet even I yielded in some degree

to the influence of historical associations, and found it hard to

attend to the geology of Cape Diamond or the botany of the Plains of

Abraham. I still remember the harbor far beneath me, sparkling like

silver in the sun, the answering highlands of Point Levi on the

southeast, the frowning Cap Tourmente abruptly bounding the seaward

view far in the northeast, the villages of Lorette and Charlesbourg on

the north, and, further west, the distant Val Cartier, sparkling with

white cottages, hardly removed by distance through the clear air,--not

to mention a few blue mountains along the horizon in that direction.

You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond the frontiers of

civilization. Yonder small group of hills, according to the

guide-book, forms "the portal of the wilds which are trodden only by

the feet of the Indian hunters as far as Hudson's Bay." It is but a

few years since Bouchette declared that the country ten leagues north

of the British capital of North America was as little known as the

middle of Africa. Thus the citadel under my feet, and all historical

associations, were swept away again by an influence from the wilds and

from Nature, as if the beholder had read her history,--an influence

which, like the Great River itself, flowed from the Arctic fastnesses

and Western forests with irresistible tide over all.

The most interesting object in Canada to me was the River St.

Lawrence, known far and wide, and for centuries, as the Great River.

Cartier, its discoverer, sailed up it as far as Montreal in

1535,--nearly a century before the coming of the Pilgrims; and I have

seen a pretty accurate map of it so far, containing the city of

"Hochelaga" and the river "Saguenay," in Ortelius's _Theatrum Orbis

Terrarum_, printed at Antwerp in 1575,--the first edition having

appeared in 1570,--in which the famous cities of "Norumbega" and

"Orsinora" stand on the rough-blocked continent where New England is

to-day, and the fabulous but unfortunate Isle of Demons, and Frislant,

and others, lie off and on in the unfrequented sea, some of them

prowling near what is now the course of the Cunard steamers. In this

ponderous folio of the "Ptolemy of his age," said to be the first

general atlas published after the revival of the sciences in Europe,

only one page of which is devoted to the topography of the _Novus

Orbis_, the St. Lawrence is the only large river, whether drawn from

fancy or from observation, on the east side of North America. It was

famous in Europe before the other rivers of North America were heard

of, notwithstanding that the mouth of the Mississippi is said to have

been discovered first, and its stream was reached by Soto not long

after; but the St. Lawrence had attracted settlers to its cold shores

long before the Mississippi, or even the Hudson, was known to the

world. Schoolcraft was misled by Gallatin into saying that Narvaez

discovered the Mississippi. De Vega does _not_ say so. The first

explorers declared that the summer in that country was as warm as

France, and they named one of the bays in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the

Bay of Chaleur, or of warmth; but they said nothing about the winter

being as cold as Greenland. In the manuscript account of Cartier's

second voyage, attributed by some to that navigator himself, it is

called "the greatest river, without comparison, that is known to have

ever been seen." The savages told him that it was the "chemin du

Canada,"--the highway to Canada,--"which goes so far that no man had

ever been to the end that they had heard." The Saguenay, one of its

tributaries, which the panorama has made known to New England within

three years, is described by Cartier, in 1535, and still more

particularly by Jean Alphonse, in 1542, who adds, "I think that this

river comes from the sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a

strong current, and there runs there a terrible tide." The early

explorers saw many whales and other sea-monsters far up the St.

Lawrence. Champlain, in his map, represents a whale spouting in the

harbor of Quebec, three hundred and sixty miles from what is called

the mouth of the river; and Charlevoix takes his reader to the summit

of Cape Diamond to see the "porpoises, white as snow," sporting on the

surface of the harbor of Quebec. And Boucher says in 1664, "from there

[Tadoussac] to Montreal is found a great quantity of _Marsouins

blancs_." Several whales have been taken pretty high up the river

since I was there. P. A. Gosse, in his "Canadian Naturalist," p. 171

(London, 1840), speaks of "the white dolphin of the St. Lawrence

(_Delphinus Canadensis_)," as considered different from those of the

sea. "The Natural History Society of Montreal offered a prize, a few

years ago, for an essay on the _Cetacea_ of the St. Lawrence, which

was, I believe, handed in." In Champlain's day it was commonly called

"the Great River of Canada." More than one nation has claimed it. In

Ogilby's "America of 1670," in the map _Novi Belgii_, it is called "De

Groote River van Niew Nederlandt." It bears different names in

different parts of its course, as it flows through what were formerly

the territories of different nations. From the Gulf to Lake Ontario

it is called at present the St. Lawrence; from Montreal to the same

place it is frequently called the Cateraqui; and higher up it is known

successively as the Niagara, Detroit, St. Clair, St. Mary's, and St.

Louis rivers. Humboldt, speaking of the Orinoco, says that this name

is unknown in the interior of the country; so likewise the tribes that

dwell about the sources of the St. Lawrence have never heard the name

which it bears in the lower part of its course. It rises near another

father of waters,--the Mississippi,--issuing from a remarkable spring

far up in the woods, called Lake Superior, fifteen hundred miles in

circumference; and several other springs there are thereabouts which

feed it. It makes such a noise in its tumbling down at one place as is

heard all round the world. Bouchette, the Surveyor-General of the

Canadas, calls it "the most splendid river on the globe;" says that it

is two thousand statute miles long (more recent geographers make it

four or five hundred miles longer); that at the Rivière du Sud it is

eleven miles wide; at the Traverse, thirteen; at the Paps of Matane,

twenty-five; at the Seven Islands, seventy-three; and at its mouth,

from Cape Rosier to the Mingan Settlements in Labrador, near one

hundred and five (?) miles wide. According to Captain Bayfield's

recent chart it is about _ninety-six_ geographical miles wide at the

latter place, measuring at right angles with the stream. It has much

the largest estuary, regarding both length and breadth, of any river

on the globe. Humboldt says that the River Plate, which has the

broadest estuary of the South American rivers, is ninety-two

geographical miles wide at its mouth; also he found the Orinoco to be

more than three miles wide at five hundred and sixty miles from its

mouth; but he does not tell us that ships of six hundred tons can sail

up it so far, as they can up the St. Lawrence to Montreal,--an equal

distance. If he had described a fleet of such ships at anchor in a

city's port so far inland, we should have got a very different idea of

the Orinoco. Perhaps Charlevoix describes the St. Lawrence truly as

the most _navigable_ river in the world. Between Montreal and Quebec

it averages about two miles wide. The tide is felt as far up as Three

Rivers, four hundred and thirty-two miles, which is as far as from

Boston to Washington. As far up as Cap aux Oyes, sixty or seventy

miles below Quebec, Kalm found a great part of the plants near the

shore to be marine, as glasswort (_Salicornia_), seaside pease (_Pisum

maritimum_), sea-milkwort (_Glaux_), beach-grass (_Psamma arenaria_),

seaside plantain (_Plantago maritima_), the sea-rocket (_Bunias

cakile_), etc.

The geographer Guyot observes that the Marañon is three thousand miles

long, and gathers its waters from a surface of a million and a half

square miles; that the Mississippi is also three thousand miles long,

but its basin covers only from eight to nine hundred thousand square

miles; that the St. Lawrence is eighteen hundred miles long, and its

basin covers more than a million square miles (Darby says five hundred

thousand); and speaking of the lakes, he adds, "These vast fresh-water

seas, together with the St. Lawrence, cover a surface of nearly one

hundred thousand square miles, and it has been calculated that they

contain about one half of all the fresh water on the surface of our

planet." But all these calculations are necessarily very rude and

inaccurate. Its tributaries, the Ottawa, St. Maurice, and Saguenay,

are great rivers themselves. The latter is said to be more than one

thousand (?) feet deep at its mouth, while its cliffs rise

perpendicularly an equal distance above its surface. Pilots say there

are no soundings till one hundred and fifty miles up the St. Lawrence.

The greatest sounding in the river, given on Bayfield's chart of the

gulf and river, is two hundred and twenty-eight fathoms. McTaggart, an

engineer, observes that "the Ottawa is larger than all the rivers in

Great Britain, were they running in one." The traveler Grey writes: "A

dozen Danubes, Rhines, Taguses, and Thameses would be nothing to

twenty miles of fresh water in breadth [as where he happened to be],

from ten to forty fathoms in depth." And again: "There is not perhaps

in the whole extent of this immense continent so fine an approach to

it as by the river St. Lawrence. In the Southern States you have, in

general, a level country for many miles inland; here you are

introduced at once into a majestic scenery, where everything is on a

grand scale,--mountains, woods, lakes, rivers, precipices,

waterfalls."

We have not yet the data for a minute comparison of the St. Lawrence

with the South American rivers; but it is obvious that, taking it in

connection with its lakes, its estuary, and its falls, it easily bears

off the palm from all the rivers on the globe; for though, as

Bouchette observes, it may not carry to the ocean a greater volume of

water than the Amazon and Mississippi, its surface and cubic mass are

far greater than theirs. But, unfortunately, this noble river is

closed by ice from the beginning of December to the middle of April.

The arrival of the first vessel from England when the ice breaks up

is, therefore, a great event, as when the salmon, shad, and alewives

come up a river in the spring to relieve the famishing inhabitants on

its banks. Who can say what would have been the history of this

continent if, as has been suggested, this river had emptied into the

sea where New York stands!

After visiting the Museum and taking one more look at the wall, I made

haste to the Lord Sydenham steamer, which at five o'clock was to leave

for Montreal. I had already taken a seat on deck, but finding that I

had still an hour and a half to spare, and remembering that large map

of Canada which I had seen in the parlor of the restaurant in my

search after pudding, and realizing that I might never see the like

out of the country, I returned thither, asked liberty to look at the

map, rolled up the mahogany table, put my handkerchief on it, stood on

it, and copied all I wanted before the maid came in and said to me

standing on the table, "Some gentlemen want the room, sir;" and I

retreated without having broken the neck of a single bottle, or my

own, very thankful and willing to pay for all the solid food I had

got. We were soon abreast of Cap Rouge, eight miles above Quebec,

after we got under weigh. It was in this place, then called _Fort du

France Roy_, that the Sieur de Roberval with his company, having sent

home two of his three ships, spent the winter of 1542-43. It appears

that they fared in the following manner (I translate from the

original): "Each mess had only two loaves, weighing each a pound, and

half a pound of beef. They ate pork for dinner, with half a pound of

butter, and beef for supper, with about two handfuls of beans without

butter. Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays they ate salted cod, and

sometimes green, for dinner, with butter; and porpoise and beans for

supper. Monsieur Roberval administered good justice, and punished each

according to his offense. One, named Michel Gaillon, was hung for

theft; John of Nantes was put in irons and imprisoned for his fault;

and others were likewise put in irons; and many were whipped, both men

and women; by which means they lived in peace and tranquillity." In an

account of a voyage up this river, printed in the Jesuit Relations in

the year 1664, it is said: "It was an interesting navigation for us in

ascending the river from Cap Tourmente to Quebec, to see on this side

and on that, for the space of eight leagues, the farms and the houses

of the company, built by our French, all along these shores. On the

right, the seigniories of Beauport, of Notre Dame des Anges; and on

the left, this beautiful Isle of Orleans." The same traveler names

among the fruits of the country observed at the Isles of Richelieu, at

the head of Lake St. Peter, "kinds (_des espèces_) of little apples or

haws (_senelles_), and of pears, which only ripen with the frost."

Night came on before we had passed the high banks. We had come from

Montreal to Quebec in one night. The return voyage, against the

stream, takes but an hour longer. Jacques Cartier, the first white man

who is known to have ascended this river, thus speaks of his voyage

from what is now Quebec to the foot of Lake St. Peter, or about

half-way to Montreal: "From the said day, the 19th, even to the 28th

of the said month [September, 1535], we had been navigating up the

said river without losing hour or day, during which time we had seen

and found as much country and lands as level as we could desire, full

of the most beautiful trees in the world," which he goes on to

describe. But we merely slept and woke again to find that we had

passed through all that country which he was eight days in sailing

through. He must have had a troubled sleep. We were not long enough on

the river to realize that it had length; we got only the impression of

its breadth, as if we had passed over a lake a mile or two in breadth

and several miles long, though we might thus have slept through a

European kingdom. Being at the head of Lake St. Peter, on the

above-mentioned 28th of September, dealing with the natives, Cartier

says: "We inquired of them by signs if this was the route to Hochelaga

[Montreal]; and they answered that it was, and that there were yet

three days' journeys to go there." He finally arrived at Hochelaga on

the 2d of October.

When I went on deck at dawn we had already passed through Lake St.

Peter, and saw islands ahead of us. Our boat advancing with a strong

and steady pulse over the calm surface, we felt as if we were

permitted to be awake in the scenery of a dream. Many vivacious

Lombardy poplars along the distant shores gave them a novel and

lively, though artificial, look, and contrasted strangely with the

slender and graceful elms on both shores and islands. The church of

Varennes, fifteen miles from Montreal, was conspicuous at a great

distance before us, appearing to belong to, and rise out of, the

river; and now, and before, Mount Royal indicated where the city was.

We arrived about seven o'clock, and set forth immediately to ascend

the mountain, two miles distant, going across lots in spite of

numerous signs threatening the severest penalties to trespassers, past

an old building known as the MacTavish property,--Simon MacTavish, I

suppose, whom Silliman refers to as "in a sense the founder of the

Northwestern Company." His tomb was behind in the woods, with a

remarkably high wall and higher monument. The family returned to

Europe. He could not have imagined how dead he would be in a few

years, and all the more dead and forgotten for being buried under such

a mass of gloomy stone, where not even memory could get at him without

a crowbar. Ah! poor man, with that last end of his! However, he may

have been the worthiest of mortals for aught that I know. From the

mountain-top we got a view of the whole city; the flat, fertile,

extensive island; the noble sea of the St. Lawrence swelling into

lakes; the mountains about St. Hyacinthe, and in Vermont and New York;

and the mouth of the Ottawa in the west, overlooking that St. Anne's

where the voyageur sings his "parting hymn," and bids adieu to

civilization,--a name, thanks to Moore's verses, the most suggestive

of poetic associations of any in Canada. We, too, climbed the hill

which Cartier, first of white men, ascended, and named Mont-real (the

3d of October, O. S., 1535), and, like him, "we saw the said river as

far as we could see, _grand_, _large_, _et spacieux_, going to

the southwest," toward that land whither Donnacona had told the

discoverer that he had been a month's journey from Canada, where there

grew "_force Canelle et Girofle_," much cinnamon and cloves, and where

also, as the natives told him, were three great lakes and afterward

_une mer douce_,--a sweet sea,--_de laquelle n'est mention avoir vu le

bout_, of which there is no mention to have seen the end. But instead

of an Indian town far in the interior of a new world, with guides to

show us where the river came from, we found a splendid and bustling

stone-built city of white men, and only a few squalid Indians offered

to sell us baskets at the Lachine Railroad Depot, and Hochelaga is,

perchance, but the fancy name of an engine company or an eating-house.

[Illustration: _Montreal from Mount Royal_]

We left Montreal Wednesday, the 2d of October, late in the afternoon.

In the La Prairie cars the Yankees made themselves merry, imitating

the cries of the charette-drivers to perfection, greatly to the

amusement of some French-Canadian travelers, and they kept it up all

the way to Boston. I saw one person on board the boat at St. Johns,

and one or two more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray

greatcoats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods, which fell

back between their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up

over the head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place

now. They looked as if they would be convenient and proper enough as

long as the coats were new and tidy, but would soon come to have a

beggarly and unsightly look, akin to rags and dust-holes. We reached

Burlington early in the morning, where the Yankees tried to pass off

their Canada coppers, but the newsboys knew better. Returning through

the Green Mountains, I was reminded that I had not seen in Canada such

brilliant autumnal tints as I had previously seen in Vermont. Perhaps

there was not yet so great and sudden a contrast with the summer heats

in the former country as in these mountain valleys. As we were passing

through Ashburnham, by a new white house which stood at some distance

in a field, one passenger exclaimed, so that all in the car could hear

him, "There, there's not so good a house as that in all Canada!" I did

not much wonder at his remark, for there is a neatness, as well as

evident prosperity, a certain elastic easiness of circumstances, so to

speak, when not rich, about a New England house, as if the proprietor

could at least afford to make repairs in the spring, which the

Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they are no better

constructed than a stone barn would be with us; the only building,

except the château, on which money and taste are expended, being the

church. In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for

the château, and while every village here contains at least several

gentlemen or "squires," _there_ there is but one to a seigniory.

I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada

and traveled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey,

including two guide-books and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and

a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy-five cents. I do not suppose

that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a

cheap excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as

seen by Hearne or Mackenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting

features would be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind the word

_Canadense_, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should

like still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the

wilder parts of Canada, which perhaps might be called _Iter

Canadense_.

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS[3]

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read

in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground,

of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes; of

the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the

rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting

of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of

health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

Within the circuit of this plodding life,

There enter moments of an azure hue,

Untarnished fair as is the violet

Or anemone, when the spring strews them

By some meandering rivulet, which make

The best philosophy untrue that aims

But to console man for his grievances.

I have remembered, when the winter came,

High in my chamber in the frosty nights,

When in the still light of the cheerful moon,

On every twig and rail and jutting spout,

The icy spears were adding to their length

Against the arrows of the coming sun,

How in the shimmering noon of summer past

Some unrecorded beam slanted across

The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;

Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,

The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag

Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,

Which now through all its course stands still and dumb,

Its own memorial,--purling at its play

Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,

Until its youthful sound was hushed at last

In the staid current of the lowland stream;

Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,

And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,

When all the fields around lay bound and hoar

Beneath a thick integument of snow.

So by God's cheap economy made rich

To go upon my winter's task again.

I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of service-berries,

poke-weed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these cheap summer

glories? There is a singular health in those words, Labrador and East

Main, which no desponding creed recognizes. How much more than Federal

are these States! If there were no other vicissitudes than the

seasons, our interest would never tire. Much more is adoing than

Congress wots of. What journal do the persimmon and the buckeye keep,

and the sharp-shinned hawk? What is transpiring from summer to winter

in the Carolinas, and the Great Pine Forest, and the Valley of the

Mohawk? The merely political aspect of the land is never very

cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a

political organization. On this side all lands present only the

symptoms of decay. I see but Bunker Hill and Sing-Sing, the District

of Columbia and Sullivan's Island, with a few avenues connecting them.

But paltry are they all beside one blast of the east or the south wind

which blows over them.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at

least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and

livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so. There

is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance

so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high

pastures. I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a

sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the

system. To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a

fountain of health. To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty

no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of

spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such

as shared the serenity of nature. Surely good courage will not flag

here on the Atlantic border, as long as we are flanked by the Fur

Countries. There is enough in that sound to cheer one under any

circumstances. The spruce, the hemlock, and the pine will not

countenance despair. Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches do

forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great Slave Lake, and that

the Esquimaux sledges are drawn by dogs, and in the twilight of the

northern night the hunter does not give over to follow the seal and

walrus on the ice. They are of sick and diseased imaginations who

would toll the world's knell so soon. Cannot these sedentary sects do

better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other

busy living men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher's

consolation. What is any man's discourse to me, if I am not sensible

of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? In

it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am

not constantly greeted and refreshed as by the flux of sparkling

streams. Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the young fry

that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a

summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods

ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident

and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook

minnow stoutly stemming the current, the lustre of whose scales, worn

bright by the attrition, is reflected upon the bank!

We fancy that this din of religion, literature, and philosophy, which

is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the

universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's

axle; but if a man sleep soundly, he will forget it all between sunset

and dawn. It is the three-inch swing of a pendulum in a cupboard,

which the great pulse of nature vibrates by and through each instant.

When we lift our eyelids and open our ears, it disappears with smoke

and rattle like the cars on a railroad. When I detect a beauty in any

of the recesses of nature, I am reminded, by the serene and retired

spirit in which it requires to be contemplated, of the inexpressible

privacy of a life,--how silent and unambitious it is. The beauty there

is in mosses must be considered from the holiest, quietest nook. What

an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life!

Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far

more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior. I am pleased

to learn that Thales was up and stirring by night not unfrequently,

as his astronomical discoveries prove. Linnæus, setting out for

Lapland, surveys his "comb" and "spare shirt," "leathern breeches" and

"gauze cap to keep off gnats," with as much complacency as Bonaparte a

park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the

man is admirable. His eye is to take in fish, flower, and bird,

quadruped and biped. Science is always brave; for to know is to know

good; doubt and danger quail before her eye. What the coward overlooks

in his hurry, she calmly scrutinizes, breaking ground like a pioneer

for the array of arts that follow in her train. But cowardice is

unscientific; for there cannot be a science of ignorance. There may be

a science of bravery, for that advances; but a retreat is rarely well

conducted; if it is, then is it an orderly advance in the face of

circumstances.

But to draw a little nearer to our promised topics. Entomology extends

the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with

a sense of greater space and freedom. It suggests besides, that the

universe is not rough-hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will

bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with

the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She has no

interstices; every part is full of life. I explore, too, with

pleasure, the sources of the myriad sounds which crowd the summer

noon, and which seem the very grain and stuff of which eternity is

made. Who does not remember the shrill roll-call of the harvest-fly?

There were ears for these sounds in Greece long ago, as Anacreon's ode

will show.

"We pronounce thee happy, Cicada,

For on the tops of the trees,

Drinking a little dew,

Like any king thou singest,

For thine are they all,

Whatever thou seest in the fields,

And whatever the woods bear.

Thou art the friend of the husbandmen,

In no respect injuring any one;

And thou art honored among men,

Sweet prophet of summer.

The Muses love thee,

And Phœbus himself loves thee,

And has given thee a shrill song;

Age does not wrack thee,

Thou skillful, earthborn, song-loving,

Unsuffering, bloodless one;

Almost thou art like the gods."

In the autumn days, the creaking of crickets is heard at noon over all

the land, and as in summer they are heard chiefly at nightfall, so

then by their incessant chirp they usher in the evening of the year.

Nor can all the vanities that vex the world alter one whit the measure

that night has chosen. Every pulse-beat is in exact time with the

cricket's chant and the tickings of the deathwatch in the wall.

Alternate with these if you can.

About two hundred and eighty birds either reside permanently in the

State, or spend the summer only, or make us a passing visit. Those

which spend the winter with us have obtained our warmest sympathy. The

nuthatch and chickadee flitting in company through the dells of the

wood, the one harshly scolding at the intruder, the other with a faint

lisping note enticing him on; the jay screaming in the orchard; the

crow cawing in unison with the storm; the partridge, like a russet

link extended over from autumn to spring, preserving unbroken the

chain of summers; the hawk with warrior-like firmness abiding the

blasts of winter; the robin[4] and lark lurking by warm springs in the

woods; the familiar snowbird culling a few seeds in the garden or a

few crumbs in the yard; and occasionally the shrike, with heedless and

unfrozen melody bringing back summer again:--

His steady sails he never furls

At any time o' year,

And perching now on Winter's curls,

He whistles in his ear.

As the spring advances, and the ice is melting in the river, our

earliest and straggling visitors make their appearance. Again does the

old Teian poet sing as well for New England as for Greece, in the

RETURN OF SPRING

Behold, how, Spring appearing,

The Graces send forth roses;

Behold, how the wave of the sea

Is made smooth by the calm;

Behold, how the duck dives;

Behold, how the crane travels;

And Titan shines constantly bright.

The shadows of the clouds are moving;

The works of man shine;

The earth puts forth fruits;

The fruit of the olive puts forth.

The cup of Bacchus is crowned,

Along the leaves, along the branches,

The fruit, bending them down, flourishes.

The ducks alight at this season in the still water, in company with

the gulls, which do not fail to improve an east wind to visit our

meadows, and swim about by twos and threes, pluming themselves, and

diving to peck at the root of the lily, and the cranberries which the

frost has not loosened. The first flock of geese is seen beating to

north, in long harrows and waving lines; the jingle of the song

sparrow salutes us from the shrubs and fences; the plaintive note of

the lark comes clear and sweet from the meadow; and the bluebird, like

an azure ray, glances past us in our walk. The fish hawk, too, is

occasionally seen at this season sailing majestically over the water,

and he who has once observed it will not soon forget the majesty of

its flight. It sails the air like a ship of the line, worthy to

struggle with the elements, falling back from time to time like a ship

on its beam ends, and holding its talons up as if ready for the

arrows, in the attitude of the national bird. It is a great presence,

as of the master of river and forest. Its eye would not quail before

the owner of the soil, but make him feel like an intruder on its

domains. And then its retreat, sailing so steadily away, is a kind of

advance. I have by me one of a pair of ospreys, which have for some

years fished in this vicinity, shot by a neighboring pond, measuring

more than two feet in length, and six in the stretch of its wings.

Nuttall mentions that "the ancients, particularly Aristotle, pretended

that the ospreys taught their young to gaze at the sun, and those who

were unable to do so were destroyed. Linnæus even believed, on ancient

authority, that one of the feet of this bird had all the toes divided,

while the other was partly webbed, so that it could swim with one

foot, and grasp a fish with the other." But that educated eye is now

dim, and those talons are nerveless. Its shrill scream seems yet to

linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is

the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in the erectile

feathers of the head and neck. It reminds me of the Argonautic

expedition, and would inspire the dullest to take flight over

Parnassus.

The booming of the bittern, described by Goldsmith and Nuttall, is

frequently heard in our fens, in the morning and evening, sounding

like a pump, or the chopping of wood in a frosty morning in some

distant farm-yard. The manner in which this sound is produced I have

not seen anywhere described. On one occasion, the bird has been seen

by one of my neighbors to thrust its bill into the water, and suck up

as much as it could hold, then, raising its head, it pumped it out

again with four or five heaves of the neck, throwing it two or three

feet, and making the sound each time.

At length the summer's eternity is ushered in by the cackle of the

flicker among the oaks on the hillside, and a new dynasty begins with

calm security.

In May and June the woodland quire is in full tune, and, given the

immense spaces of hollow air, and this curious human ear, one does

not see how the void could be better filled.

Each summer sound

Is a summer round.

As the season advances, and those birds which make us but a passing

visit depart, the woods become silent again, and but few feathers

ruffle the drowsy air. But the solitary rambler may still find a

response and expression for every mood in the depths of the wood.

Sometimes I hear the veery's[5] clarion,

Or brazen trump of the impatient jay,

And in secluded woods the chickadee

Doles out her scanty notes, which sing the praise

Of heroes, and set forth the loveliness

Of virtue evermore.

The phœbe still sings in harmony with the sultry weather by the

brink of the pond, nor are the desultory hours of noon in the midst of

the village without their minstrel.

Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays

The vireo rings the changes sweet,

During the trivial summer days,

Striving to lift our thoughts above the street.

With the autumn begins in some measure a new spring. The plover is

heard whistling high in the air over the dry pastures, the finches

flit from tree to tree, the bobolinks and flickers fly in flocks, and

the goldfinch rides on the earliest blast, like a winged hyla peeping

amid the rustle of the leaves. The crows, too, begin now to

congregate; you may stand and count them as they fly low and

straggling over the landscape, singly or by twos and threes, at

intervals of half a mile, until a hundred have passed.

I have seen it suggested somewhere that the crow was brought to this

country by the white man; but I shall as soon believe that the white

man planted these pines and hemlocks. He is no spaniel to follow our

steps; but rather flits about the clearings like the dusky spirit of

the Indian, reminding me oftener of Philip and Powhatan than of

Winthrop and Smith. He is a relic of the dark ages. By just so slight,

by just so lasting a tenure does superstition hold the world ever;

there is the rook in England, and the crow in New England.

Thou dusky spirit of the wood,

Bird of an ancient brood,

Flitting thy lonely way,

A meteor in the summer's day,

From wood to wood, from hill to hill,

Low over forest, field, and rill,

What wouldst thou say?

Why shouldst thou haunt the day?

What makes thy melancholy float?

What bravery inspires thy throat,

And bears thee up above the clouds,

Over desponding human crowds,

Which far below

Lay thy haunts low?

The late walker or sailor, in the October evenings, may hear the

murmurings of the snipe, circling over the meadows, the most

spirit-like sound in nature; and still later in the autumn, when the

frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our

retired ponds, where he may lurk undisturbed till the season of

moulting is passed, making the woods ring with his wild laughter. This

bird, the Great Northern Diver, well deserves its name; for when

pursued with a boat, it will dive, and swim like a fish under water,

for sixty rods or more, as fast as a boat can be paddled, and its

pursuer, if he would discover his game again, must put his ear to the

surface to hear where it comes up. When it comes to the surface, it

throws the water off with one shake of its wings, and calmly swims

about until again disturbed.

These are the sights and sounds which reach our senses oftenest during

the year. But sometimes one hears a quite new note, which has for

background other Carolinas and Mexicos than the books describe, and

learns that his ornithology has done him no service.

It appears from the Report that there are about forty quadrupeds

belonging to the State, and among these one is glad to hear of a few

bears, wolves, lynxes, and wildcats.

When our river overflows its banks in the spring, the wind from the

meadows is laden with a strong scent of musk, and by its freshness

advertises me of an unexplored wildness. Those backwoods are not far

off then. I am affected by the sight of the cabins of the muskrat,

made of mud and grass, and raised three or four feet along the river,

as when I read of the barrows of Asia. The muskrat is the beaver of

the settled States. Their number has even increased within a few

years in this vicinity. Among the rivers which empty into the

Merrimack, the Concord is known to the boatmen as a dead stream. The

Indians are said to have called it Musketaquid, or Prairie River. Its

current being much more sluggish and its water more muddy than the

rest, it abounds more in fish and game of every kind. According to the

History of the town, "The fur-trade was here once very important. As

early as 1641, a company was formed in the colony, of which Major

Willard of Concord was superintendent, and had the exclusive right to

trade with the Indians in furs and other articles; and for this right

they were obliged to pay into the public treasury one twentieth of all

the furs they obtained." There are trappers in our midst still, as

well as on the streams of the far West, who night and morning go the

round of their traps, without fear of the Indian. One of these takes

from one hundred and fifty to two hundred muskrats in a year, and even

thirty-six have been shot by one man in a day. Their fur, which is not

nearly as valuable as formerly, is in good condition in the winter and

spring only; and upon the breaking up of the ice, when they are driven

out of their holes by the water, the greatest number is shot from

boats, either swimming or resting on their stools, or slight supports

of grass and reeds, by the side of the stream. Though they exhibit

considerable cunning at other times, they are easily taken in a trap,

which has only to be placed in their holes, or wherever they frequent,

without any bait being used, though it is sometimes rubbed with their

musk. In the winter the hunter cuts holes in the ice, and shoots them

when they come to the surface. Their burrows are usually in the high

banks of the river, with the entrance under water, and rising within

to above the level of high water. Sometimes their nests, composed of

dried meadow-grass and flags, may be discovered where the bank is low

and spongy, by the yielding of the ground under the feet. They have

from three to seven or eight young in the spring.

Frequently, in the morning or evening, a long ripple is seen in the

still water, where a muskrat is crossing the stream, with only its

nose above the surface, and sometimes a green bough in its mouth to

build its house with. When it finds itself observed, it will dive and

swim five or six rods under water, and at length conceal itself in its

hole, or the weeds. It will remain under water for ten minutes at a

time, and on one occasion has been seen, when undisturbed, to form an

air-bubble under the ice, which contracted and expanded as it breathed

at leisure. When it suspects danger on shore, it will stand erect like

a squirrel, and survey its neighborhood for several minutes, without

moving.

In the fall, if a meadow intervene between their burrows and the

stream, they erect cabins of mud and grass, three or four feet high,

near its edge. These are not their breeding-places, though young are

sometimes found in them in late freshets, but rather their

hunting-lodges, to which they resort in the winter with their food,

and for shelter. Their food consists chiefly of flags and fresh-water

mussels, the shells of the latter being left in large quantities

around their lodges in the spring.

The Penobscot Indian wears the entire skin of a muskrat, with the

legs and tail dangling, and the head caught under his girdle, for a

pouch, into which he puts his fishing-tackle, and essences to scent

his traps with.

The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have

disappeared; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the

mink is less common than formerly.

Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox has obtained the widest

and most familiar reputation, from the time of Pilpay and Æsop to the

present day. His recent tracks still give variety to a winter's walk.

I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before me by some hours,

or which perhaps I have started, with such a tiptoe of expectation as

if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood,

and expected soon to catch it in its lair. I am curious to know what

has determined its graceful curvatures, and how surely they were

coincident with the fluctuations of some mind. I know which way a mind

wended, what horizon it faced, by the setting of these tracks, and

whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by their greater or less intervals

and distinctness; for the swiftest step leaves yet a lasting trace.

Sometimes you will see the trails of many together, and where they

have gamboled and gone through a hundred evolutions, which testify to

a singular listlessness and leisure in nature.

When I see a fox run across the pond on the snow, with the

carelessness of freedom, or at intervals trace his course in the

sunshine along the ridge of a hill, I give up to him sun and earth as

to their true proprietor. He does not go in the sun, but it seems to

follow him, and there is a visible sympathy between him and it.

Sometimes, when the snow lies light and but five or six inches deep,

you may give chase and come up with one on foot. In such a case he

will show a remarkable presence of mind, choosing only the safest

direction, though he may lose ground by it. Notwithstanding his

fright, he will take no step which is not beautiful. His pace is a

sort of leopard canter, as if he were in no wise impeded by the snow,

but were husbanding his strength all the while. When the ground is

uneven, the course is a series of graceful curves, conforming to the

shape of the surface. He runs as though there were not a bone in his

back. Occasionally dropping his muzzle to the ground for a rod or two,

and then tossing his head aloft, when satisfied of his course. When he

comes to a declivity, he will put his fore feet together, and slide

swiftly down it, shoving the snow before him. He treads so softly that

you would hardly hear it from any nearness, and yet with such

expression that it would not be quite inaudible at any distance.

Of fishes, seventy-five genera and one hundred and seven species are

described in the Report. The fisherman will be startled to learn that

there are but about a dozen kinds in the ponds and streams of any

inland town; and almost nothing is known of their habits. Only their

names and residence make one love fishes. I would know even the number

of their fin-rays, and how many scales compose the lateral line. I am

the wiser in respect to all knowledges, and the better qualified for

all fortunes, for knowing that there is a minnow in the brook.

Methinks I have need even of his sympathy, and to be his fellow in a

degree.

I have experienced such simple delight in the trivial matters of

fishing and sporting, formerly, as might have inspired the muse of

Homer or Shakespeare; and now, when I turn the pages and ponder the

plates of the Angler's Souvenir, I am fain to exclaim,--

"Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer's cloud?"

Next to nature, it seems as if man's actions were the most natural,

they so gently accord with her. The small seines of flax stretched

across the shallow and transparent parts of our river are no more

intrusion than the cobweb in the sun. I stay my boat in mid-current,

and look down in the sunny water to see the civil meshes of his nets,

and wonder how the blustering people of the town could have done this

elvish work. The twine looks like a new river-weed, and is to the

river as a beautiful memento of man's presence in nature, discovered

as silently and delicately as a footprint in the sand.

When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under

my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How

many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain!

The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At

length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see the

heavens again.

Early in the spring, after the ice has melted, is the time for

spearing fish. Suddenly the wind shifts from northeast and east to

west and south, and every icicle, which has tinkled on the meadow

grass so long, trickles down its stem, and seeks its level unerringly

with a million comrades. The steam curls up from every roof and

fence.

I see the civil sun drying earth's tears,

Her tears of joy, which only faster flow.

In the brooks is heard the slight grating sound of small cakes of ice,

floating with various speed, full of content and promise, and where

the water gurgles under a natural bridge, you may hear these hasty

rafts hold conversation in an undertone. Every rill is a channel for

the juices of the meadow. In the ponds the ice cracks with a merry and

inspiriting din, and down the larger streams is whirled grating

hoarsely, and crashing its way along, which was so lately a highway

for the woodman's team and the fox, sometimes with the tracks of the

skaters still fresh upon it, and the holes cut for pickerel. Town

committees anxiously inspect the bridges and causeways, as if by mere

eye-force to intercede with the ice and save the treasury.

The river swelleth more and more,

Like some sweet influence stealing o'er

The passive town; and for a while

Each tussock makes a tiny isle,

Where, on some friendly Ararat,

Resteth the weary water-rat.

No ripple shows Musketaquid,

Her very current e'en is hid,

As deepest souls do calmest rest

When thoughts are swelling in the breast,

And she that in the summer's drought

Doth make a rippling and a rout,

Sleeps from Nahshawtuck to the Cliff,

Unruffled by a single skiff.

But by a thousand distant hills

The louder roar a thousand rills,

And many a spring which now is dumb,

And many a stream with smothered hum,

Doth swifter well and faster glide,

Though buried deep beneath the tide.

Our village shows a rural Venice,

Its broad lagoons where yonder fen is;

As lovely as the Bay of Naples

Yon placid cove amid the maples;

And in my neighbor's field of corn

I recognize the Golden Horn.

Here Nature taught from year to year,

When only red men came to hear,--

Methinks 't was in this school of art

Venice and Naples learned their part;

But still their mistress, to my mind,

Her young disciples leaves behind.

The fisherman now repairs and launches his boat. The best time for

spearing is at this season, before the weeds have begun to grow, and

while the fishes lie in the shallow water, for in summer they prefer

the cool depths, and in the autumn they are still more or less

concealed by the grass. The first requisite is fuel for your crate;

and for this purpose the roots of the pitch pine are commonly used,

found under decayed stumps, where the trees have been felled eight or

ten years.

With a crate, or jack, made of iron hoops, to contain your fire, and

attached to the bow of your boat about three feet from the water, a

fish-spear with seven tines and fourteen feet long, a large basket or

barrow to carry your fuel and bring back your fish, and a thick outer

garment, you are equipped for a cruise. It should be a warm and still

evening; and then, with a fire crackling merrily at the prow, you may

launch forth like a cucullo into the night. The dullest soul cannot

go upon such an expedition without some of the spirit of adventure; as

if he had stolen the boat of Charon and gone down the Styx on a

midnight expedition into the realms of Pluto. And much speculation

does this wandering star afford to the musing night-walker, leading

him on and on, jack-o'-lantern-like, over the meadows; or, if he is

wiser, he amuses himself with imagining what of human life, far in the

silent night, is flitting moth-like round its candle. The silent

navigator shoves his craft gently over the water, with a smothered

pride and sense of benefaction, as if he were the phosphor, or

light-bringer, to these dusky realms, or some sister moon, blessing

the spaces with her light. The waters, for a rod or two on either hand

and several feet in depth, are lit up with more than noonday

distinctness, and he enjoys the opportunity which so many have

desired, for the roofs of a city are indeed raised, and he surveys the

midnight economy of the fishes. There they lie in every variety of

posture; some on their backs, with their white bellies uppermost, some

suspended in mid-water, some sculling gently along with a dreamy

motion of the fins, and others quite active and wide awake,--a scene

not unlike what the human city would present. Occasionally he will

encounter a turtle selecting the choicest morsels, or a muskrat

resting on a tussock. He may exercise his dexterity, if he sees fit,

on the more distant and active fish, or fork the nearer into his boat,

as potatoes out of a pot, or even take the sound sleepers with his

hands. But these last accomplishments he will soon learn to dispense

with, distinguishing the real object of his pursuit, and find

compensation in the beauty and never-ending novelty of his position.

The pines growing down to the water's edge will show newly as in the

glare of a conflagration; and as he floats under the willows with his

light, the song sparrow will often wake on her perch, and sing that

strain at midnight which she had meditated for the morning. And when

he has done, he may have to steer his way home through the dark by the

north star, and he will feel himself some degrees nearer to it for

having lost his way on the earth.

The fishes commonly taken in this way are pickerel, suckers, perch,

eels, pouts, breams, and shiners,--from thirty to sixty weight in a

night. Some are hard to be recognized in the unnatural light,

especially the perch, which, his dark bands being exaggerated,

acquires a ferocious aspect. The number of these transverse bands,

which the Report states to be seven, is, however, very variable, for

in some of our ponds they have nine and ten even.

It appears that we have eight kinds of tortoises, twelve snakes,--but

one of which is venomous,--nine frogs and toads, nine salamanders, and

one lizard, for our neighbors.

I am particularly attracted by the motions of the serpent tribe. They

make our hands and feet, the wings of the bird, and the fins of the

fish seem very superfluous, as if Nature had only indulged her fancy

in making them. The black snake will dart into a bush when pursued,

and circle round and round with an easy and graceful motion, amid the

thin and bare twigs, five or six feet from the ground, as a bird flits

from bough to bough, or hang in festoons between the forks.

Elasticity and flexibleness in the simpler forms of animal life are

equivalent to a complex system of limbs in the higher; and we have

only to be as wise and wily as the serpent, to perform as difficult

feats without the vulgar assistance of hands and feet.

In May, the snapping turtle (_Emysaurus serpentina_) is frequently

taken on the meadows and in the river. The fisherman, taking sight

over the calm surface, discovers its snout projecting above the water,

at the distance of many rods, and easily secures his prey through its

unwillingness to disturb the water by swimming hastily away, for,

gradually drawing its head under, it remains resting on some limb or

clump of grass. Its eggs, which are buried at a distance from the

water, in some soft place, as a pigeon-bed, are frequently devoured by

the skunk. It will catch fish by daylight, as a toad catches flies,

and is said to emit a transparent fluid from its mouth to attract

them.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education

and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which

flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in

the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise

purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is

typified there. I am struck with the pleasing friendships and

unanimities of nature, as when the lichen on the trees takes the form

of their leaves. In the most stupendous scenes you will see delicate

and fragile features, as slight wreaths of vapor, dew-lines, feathery

sprays, which suggest a high refinement, a noble blood and breeding,

as it were. It is not hard to account for elves and fairies; they

represent this light grace, this ethereal gentility. Bring a spray

from the wood, or a crystal from the brook, and place it on your

mantel, and your household ornaments will seem plebeian beside its

nobler fashion and bearing. It will wave superior there, as if used to

a more refined and polished circle. It has a salute and a response to

all your enthusiasm and heroism.

In the winter, I stop short in the path to admire how the trees grow

up without forethought, regardless of the time and circumstances. They

do not wait as man does, but now is the golden age of the sapling.

Earth, air, sun, and rain are occasion enough; they were no better in

primeval centuries. The "winter of _their_ discontent" never comes.

Witness the buds of the native poplar standing gayly out to the frost

on the sides of its bare switches. They express a naked confidence.

With cheerful heart one could be a sojourner in the wilderness, if he

were sure to find there the catkins of the willow or the alder. When I

read of them in the accounts of northern adventurers, by Baffin's Bay

or Mackenzie's River, I see how even there, too, I could dwell. They

are our little vegetable redeemers. Methinks our virtue will hold out

till they come again. They are worthy to have had a greater than

Minerva or Ceres for their inventor. Who was the benignant goddess

that bestowed them on mankind?

Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and

extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well

as art. Having a pilgrim's cup to make, she gives to the whole--stem,

bowl, handle, and nose--some fantastic shape, as if it were to be the

car of some fabulous marine deity, a Nereus or Triton.

In the winter, the botanist need not confine himself to his books and

herbarium, and give over his outdoor pursuits, but may study a new

department of vegetable physiology, what may be called crystalline

botany, then. The winter of 1837 was unusually favorable for this. In

December of that year, the Genius of vegetation seemed to hover by

night over its summer haunts with unusual persistency. Such a

hoar-frost as is very uncommon here or anywhere, and whose full

effects can never be witnessed after sunrise, occurred several times.

As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked

like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled

together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which

the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along

some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies

of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow. The

river, viewed from the high bank, appeared of a yellowish-green color,

though all the landscape was white. Every tree, shrub, and spire of

grass, that could raise its head above the snow, was covered with a

dense ice-foliage, answering, as it were, leaf for leaf to its summer

dress. Even the fences had put forth leaves in the night. The centre,

diverging, and more minute fibres were perfectly distinct, and the

edges regularly indented. These leaves were on the side of the twig or

stubble opposite to the sun, meeting it for the most part at right

angles, and there were others standing out at all possible angles upon

these and upon one another, with no twig or stubble supporting them.

When the first rays of the sun slanted over the scene, the grasses

seemed hung with innumerable jewels, which jingled merrily as they

were brushed by the foot of the traveler, and reflected all the hues

of the rainbow, as he moved from side to side. It struck me that these

ghost leaves, and the green ones whose forms they assume, were the

creatures of but one law; that in obedience to the same law the

vegetable juices swell gradually into the perfect leaf, on the one

hand, and the crystalline particles troop to their standard in the

same order, on the other. As if the material were indifferent, but the

law one and invariable, and every plant in the spring but pushed up

into and filled a permanent and eternal mould, which, summer and

winter forever, is waiting to be filled.

This foliate structure is common to the coral and the plumage of

birds, and to how large a part of animate and inanimate nature. The

same independence of law on matter is observable in many other

instances, as in the natural rhymes, when some animal form, color, or

odor has its counterpart in some vegetable. As, indeed, all rhymes

imply an eternal melody, independent of any particular sense.

As confirmation of the fact that vegetation is but a kind of

crystallization, every one may observe how, upon the edge of the

melting frost on the window, the needle-shaped particles are bundled

together so as to resemble fields waving with grain, or shocks rising

here and there from the stubble; on one side the vegetation of the

torrid zone, high-towering palms and wide-spread banyans, such as are

seen in pictures of oriental scenery; on the other, arctic pines stiff

frozen, with downcast branches.

Vegetation has been made the type of all growth; but as in crystals

the law is more obvious, their material being more simple, and for the

most part more transient and fleeting, would it not be as

philosophical as convenient to consider all growth, all filling up

within the limits of nature, but a crystallization more or less rapid?

On this occasion, in the side of the high bank of the river, wherever

the water or other cause had formed a cavity, its throat and outer

edge, like the entrance to a citadel, bristled with a glistening

ice-armor. In one place you might see minute ostrich-feathers, which

seemed the waving plumes of the warriors filing into the fortress; in

another, the glancing, fan-shaped banners of the Lilliputian host; and

in another, the needle-shaped particles collected into bundles,

resembling the plumes of the pine, might pass for a phalanx of spears.

From the under side of the ice in the brooks, where there was a

thicker ice below, depended a mass of crystallization, four or five

inches deep, in the form of prisms, with their lower ends open, which,

when the ice was laid on its smooth side, resembled the roofs and

steeples of a Gothic city, or the vessels of a crowded haven under a

press of canvas. The very mud in the road, where the ice had melted,

was crystallized with deep rectilinear fissures, and the crystalline

masses in the sides of the ruts resembled exactly asbestos in the

disposition of their needles. Around the roots of the stubble and

flower-stalks, the frost was gathered into the form of irregular

conical shells, or fairy rings. In some places the ice-crystals were

lying upon granite rocks, directly over crystals of quartz, the

frostwork of a longer night, crystals of a longer period, but, to some

eye unprejudiced by the short term of human life, melting as fast as

the former.

In the Report on the Invertebrate Animals, this singular fact is

recorded, which teaches us to put a new value on time and space: "The

distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a

geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches

out into the ocean, some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many

miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto proved a

barrier to the migrations of many species of Mollusca. Several genera

and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only

a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the

Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other.... Of the one

hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to

the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the

Cape."

That common mussel, the _Unio complanatus_, or more properly

_fluviatilis_, left in the spring by the muskrat upon rocks and

stumps, appears to have been an important article of food with the

Indians. In one place, where they are said to have feasted, they are

found in large quantities, at an elevation of thirty feet above the

river, filling the soil to the depth of a foot, and mingled with ashes

and Indian remains.

The works we have placed at the head of our chapter, with as much

license as the preacher selects his text, are such as imply more

labor than enthusiasm. The State wanted complete catalogues of its

natural riches, with such additional facts merely as would be directly

useful.

The reports on Fishes, Reptiles, Insects, and Invertebrate Animals,

however, indicate labor and research, and have a value independent of

the object of the legislature.

Those on Herbaceous Plants and Birds cannot be of much value, as long

as Bigelow and Nuttall are accessible. They serve but to indicate,

with more or less exactness, what species are found in the State. We

detect several errors ourselves, and a more practiced eye would no

doubt expand the list.

The Quadrupeds deserved a more final and instructive report than they

have obtained.

These volumes deal much in measurements and minute descriptions, not

interesting to the general reader, with only here and there a colored

sentence to allure him, like those plants growing in dark forests,

which bear only leaves without blossoms. But the ground was

comparatively unbroken, and we will not complain of the pioneer, if he

raises no flowers with his first crop. Let us not underrate the value

of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how

few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history

of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being

gradually written. Men are knowing enough after their fashion. Every

countryman and dairy-maid knows that the coats of the fourth stomach

of the calf will curdle milk, and what particular mushroom is a safe

and nutritious diet. You cannot go into any field or wood, but it

will seem as if every stone had been turned, and the bark on every

tree ripped up. But, after all, it is much easier to discover than to

see when the cover is off. It has been well said that "the attitude of

inspection is prone." Wisdom does not inspect, but behold. We must

look a long time before we can see. Slow are the beginnings of

philosophy. He has something demoniacal in him, who can discern a law

or couple two facts. We can imagine a time when "Water runs down hill"

may have been taught in the schools. The true man of science will know

nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see,

hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer

experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction and the

application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse

and sympathy. It is with science as with ethics,--we cannot know truth

by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and

with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will

still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more

perfect Indian wisdom.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] _Reports--on the Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds; the Herbaceous

Plants and Quadrupeds; the Insects Injurious to Vegetation; and the

Invertebrate Animals of Massachusetts._ Published agreeably to an

Order of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoölogical and

Botanical Survey of the State.

[4] A white robin and a white quail have occasionally been seen. It is

mentioned in Audubon as remarkable that the nest of a robin should be

found on the ground; but this bird seems to be less particular than

most in the choice of a building-spot. I have seen its nest placed

under the thatched roof of a deserted barn, and in one instance, where

the adjacent country was nearly destitute of trees, together with two

of the phœbe, upon the end of a board in the loft of a sawmill, but

a few feet from the saw, which vibrated several inches with the motion

of the machinery.

[5] This bird, which is so well described by Nuttall, but is

apparently unknown by the author of the Report, is one of the most

common in the woods in this vicinity, and in Cambridge I have heard

the college yard ring with its trill. The boys call it "yorrick," from

the sound of its querulous and chiding note, as it flits near the

traveler through the underwood. The cowbird's egg is occasionally

found in its nest, as mentioned by Audubon.

A WALK TO WACHUSETT

CONCORD, July 19, 1842.

The needles of the pine

All to the west incline.

Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the

mountains in our horizon, to which distance and indistinctness lent a

grandeur not their own, so that they served equally to interpret all

the allusions of poets and travelers; whether with Homer, on a spring

morning, we sat down on the many-peaked Olympus, or with Virgil and

his compeers roamed the Etrurian and Thessalian hills, or with

Humboldt measured the more modern Andes and Teneriffe. Thus we spoke

our mind to them, standing on the Concord cliffs:--

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,

With grand content ye circle round,

Tumultuous silence for all sound,

Ye distant nursery of rills,

Monadnock, and the Peterboro' hills;

Like some vast fleet,

Sailing through rain and sleet,

Through winter's cold and summer's heat;

Still holding on, upon your high emprise,

Until ye find a shore amid the skies;

Not skulking close to land,

With cargo contraband,

For they who sent a venture out by ye

Have set the sun to see

Their honesty.

Ships of the line, each one,

Ye to the westward run,

Always before the gale,

Under a press of sail,

With weight of metal all untold.

I seem to feel ye, in my firm seat here,

Immeasurable depth of hold,

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure

In your novel western leisure;

So cool your brows, and freshly blue,

As Time had nought for ye to do;

For ye lie at your length,

An unappropriated strength,

Unhewn primeval timber,

For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;

The stock of which new earths are made

One day to be our western trade,

Fit for the stanchions of a world

Which through the seas of space is hurled.

While we enjoy a lingering ray,

Ye still o'ertop the western day,

Reposing yonder, on God's croft,

Like solid stacks of hay.

Edged with silver, and with gold,

The clouds hang o'er in damask fold,

And with such depth of amber light

The west is dight,

Where still a few rays slant,

That even heaven seems extravagant.

On the earth's edge mountains and trees

Stand as they were on air graven,

Or as the vessels in a haven

Await the morning breeze.

I fancy even

Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven;

And yonder still, in spite of history's page,

Linger the golden and the silver age;

Upon the laboring gale

The news of future centuries is brought,

And of new dynasties of thought,

From your remotest vale.

But special I remember thee,

Wachusett, who like me

Standest alone without society.

Thy far blue eye,

A remnant of the sky,

Seen through the clearing or the gorge

Or from the windows of the forge,

Doth leaven all it passes by.

Nothing is true,

But stands 'tween me and you,

Thou western pioneer,

Who know'st not shame nor fear

By venturous spirit driven,

Under the eaves of heaven.

And canst expand thee there,

And breathe enough of air?

Upholding heaven, holding down earth,

Thy pastime from thy birth,

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other;

May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

[Illustration: _Mount Wachusett from the Wayland Hills_]

At length, like Rasselas, and other inhabitants of happy valleys, we

resolved to scale the blue wall which bounded the western horizon,

though not without misgivings that thereafter no visible fairyland

would exist for us. But we will not leap at once to our journey's end,

though near, but imitate Homer, who conducts his reader over the

plain, and along the resounding sea, though it be but to the tent of

Achilles. In the spaces of thought are the reaches of land and water,

where men go and come. The landscape lies far and fair within, and the

deepest thinker is the farthest traveled.

At a cool and early hour on a pleasant morning in July, my companion

and I passed rapidly through Acton and Stow, stopping to rest and

refresh us on the bank of a small stream, a tributary of the Assabet,

in the latter town. As we traversed the cool woods of Acton, with

stout staves in our hands, we were cheered by the song of the red-eye,

the thrushes, the phœbe, and the cuckoo; and as we passed through

the open country, we inhaled the fresh scent of every field, and all

nature lay passive, to be viewed and traveled. Every rail, every

farmhouse, seen dimly in the twilight, every tinkling sound told of

peace and purity, and we moved happily along the dank roads, enjoying

not such privacy as the day leaves when it withdraws, but such as it

has not profaned. It was solitude with light; which is better than

darkness. But anon, the sound of the mower's rifle was heard in the

fields, and this, too, mingled with the lowing of kine.

This part of our route lay through the country of hops, which plant

perhaps supplies the want of the vine in American scenery, and may

remind the traveler of Italy and the South of France, whether he

traverses the country when the hop-fields, as then, present solid and

regular masses of verdure, hanging in graceful festoons from pole to

pole, the cool coverts where lurk the gales which refresh the

wayfarer; or in September, when the women and children, and the

neighbors from far and near, are gathered to pick the hops into long

troughs; or later still, when the poles stand piled in vast pyramids

in the yards, or lie in heaps by the roadside.

The culture of the hop, with the processes of picking, drying in the

kiln, and packing for the market, as well as the uses to which it is

applied, so analogous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford

a theme for future poets.

The mower in the adjacent meadow could not tell us the name of the

brook on whose banks we had rested, or whether it had any, but his

younger companion, perhaps his brother, knew that it was Great Brook.

Though they stood very near together in the field, the things they

knew were very far apart; nor did they suspect each other's reserved

knowledge, till the stranger came by. In Bolton, while we rested on

the rails of a cottage fence, the strains of music which issued from

within, probably in compliment to us, sojourners, reminded us that

thus far men were fed by the accustomed pleasures. So soon did we,

wayfarers, begin to learn that man's life is rounded with the same few

facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel

to find it new. The flowers grow more various ways than he. But coming

soon to higher land, which afforded a prospect of the mountains, we

thought we had not traveled in vain, if it were only to hear a truer

and wilder pronunciation of their names from the lips of the

inhabitants; not _Way_-tatic, _Way_-chusett, but _Wor_-tatic,

_Wor_-chusett. It made us ashamed of our tame and civil pronunciation,

and we looked upon them as born and bred farther west than we. Their

tongues had a more generous accent than ours, as if breath was cheaper

where they wagged. A countryman, who speaks but seldom, talks

copiously, as it were, as his wife sets cream and cheese before you

without stint. Before noon we had reached the highlands overlooking

the valley of Lancaster (affording the first fair and open prospect

into the west), and there, on the top of a hill, in the shade of some

oaks, near to where a spring bubbled out from a leaden pipe, we rested

during the heat of the day, reading Virgil and enjoying the scenery.

It was such a place as one feels to be on the outside of the earth;

for from it we could, in some measure, see the form and structure of

the globe. There lay Wachusett, the object of our journey, lowering

upon us with unchanged proportions, though with a less ethereal aspect

than had greeted our morning gaze, while further north, in successive

order, slumbered its sister mountains along the horizon.

We could get no further into the Æneid than

-- atque altae moenia Romae,

-- and the wall of high Rome,

before we were constrained to reflect by what myriad tests a work of

genius has to be tried; that Virgil, away in Rome, two thousand years

off, should have to unfold his meaning, the inspiration of Italian

vales, to the pilgrim on New England hills. This life so raw and

modern, that so civil and ancient; and yet we read Virgil mainly to be

reminded of the identity of human nature in all ages, and, by the

poet's own account, we are both the children of a late age, and live

equally under the reign of Jupiter.

"He shook honey from the leaves, and removed fire,

And stayed the wine, everywhere flowing in rivers;

That experience, by meditating, might invent various arts

By degrees, and seek the blade of corn in furrows,

And strike out hidden fire from the veins of the flint."

The old world stands serenely behind the new, as one mountain yonder

towers behind another, more dim and distant. Rome imposes her story

still upon this late generation. The very children in the school we

had that morning passed had gone through her wars, and recited her

alarms, ere they had heard of the wars of neighboring Lancaster. The

roving eye still rests inevitably on her hills, and she still holds up

the skirts of the sky on that side, and makes the past remote.

The lay of the land hereabouts is well worthy the attention of the

traveler. The hill on which we were resting made part of an extensive

range, running from southwest to northeast, across the country, and

separating the waters of the Nashua from those of the Concord, whose

banks we had left in the morning, and by bearing in mind this fact, we

could easily determine whither each brook was bound that crossed our

path. Parallel to this, and fifteen miles further west, beyond the

deep and broad valley in which lie Groton, Shirley, Lancaster, and

Boylston, runs the Wachusett range, in the same general direction. The

descent into the valley on the Nashua side is by far the most sudden;

and a couple of miles brought us to the southern branch of the Nashua,

a shallow but rapid stream, flowing between high and gravelly banks.

But we soon learned that these were no _gelidae valles_ into which we

had descended, and, missing the coolness of the morning air, feared it

had become the sun's turn to try his power upon us.

"The sultry sun had gained the middle sky,

And not a tree, and not an herb was nigh,"

and with melancholy pleasure we echoed the melodious plaint of our

fellow-traveler, Hassan, in the desert,--

"Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,

When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way."

The air lay lifeless between the hills, as in a seething caldron, with

no leaf stirring, and instead of the fresh odor of grass and clover,

with which we had before been regaled, the dry scent of every herb

seemed merely medicinal. Yielding, therefore, to the heat, we strolled

into the woods, and along the course of a rivulet, on whose banks we

loitered, observing at our leisure the products of these new fields.

He who traverses the woodland paths, at this season, will have

occasion to remember the small, drooping, bell-like flowers and

slender red stem of the dogsbane, and the coarser stem and berry of

the poke, which are both common in remoter and wilder scenes; and if

"the sun casts such a reflecting heat from the sweet-fern" as makes

him faint, when he is climbing the bare hills, as they complained who

first penetrated into these parts, the cool fragrance of the

swamp-pink restores him again, when traversing the valleys between.

As we went on our way late in the afternoon, we refreshed ourselves by

bathing our feet in every rill that crossed the road, and anon, as we

were able to walk in the shadows of the hills, recovered our morning

elasticity. Passing through Sterling, we reached the banks of the

Stillwater, in the western part of the town, at evening, where is a

small village collected. We fancied that there was already a certain

western look about this place, a smell of pines and roar of water,

recently confined by dams, belying its name, which were exceedingly

grateful. When the first inroad has been made, a few acres leveled,

and a few houses erected, the forest looks wilder than ever. Left to

herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a

certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of

the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had

concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight. This

village had, as yet, no post-office, nor any settled name. In the

small villages which we entered, the villagers gazed after us, with a

complacent, almost compassionate look, as if we were just making our

_début_ in the world at a late hour. "Nevertheless," did they seem to

say, "come and study us, and learn men and manners." So is each one's

world but a clearing in the forest, so much open and inclosed ground.

The landlord had not yet returned from the field with his men, and the

cows had yet to be milked. But we remembered the inscription on the

wall of the Swedish inn, "You will find at Trolhate excellent bread,

meat, and wine, provided you bring them with you," and were contented.

But I must confess it did somewhat disturb our pleasure, in this

withdrawn spot, to have our own village newspaper handed us by our

host, as if the greatest charm the country offered to the traveler was

the facility of communication with the town. Let it recline on its own

everlasting hills, and not be looking out from their summits for some

petty Boston or New York in the horizon.

At intervals we heard the murmuring of water, and the slumberous

breathing of crickets, throughout the night; and left the inn the next

morning in the gray twilight, after it had been hallowed by the night

air, and when only the innocent cows were stirring, with a kind of

regret. It was only four miles to the base of the mountain, and the

scenery was already more picturesque. Our road lay along the course of

the Stillwater, which was brawling at the bottom of a deep ravine,

filled with pines and rocks, tumbling fresh from the mountains, so

soon, alas! to commence its career of usefulness. At first, a cloud

hung between us and the summit, but it was soon blown away. As we

gathered the raspberries, which grew abundantly by the roadside, we

fancied that that action was consistent with a lofty prudence; as if

the traveler who ascends into a mountainous region should fortify

himself by eating of such light ambrosial fruits as grow there, and

drinking of the springs which gush out from the mountain-sides, as he

gradually inhales the subtler and purer atmosphere of those elevated

places, thus propitiating the mountain gods by a sacrifice of their

own fruits. The gross products of the plains and valleys are for such

as dwell therein; but it seemed to us that the juices of this berry

had relation to the thin air of the mountain-tops.

In due time we began to ascend the mountain, passing, first, through a

grand sugar maple wood, which bore the marks of the auger, then a

denser forest, which gradually became dwarfed, till there were no

trees whatever. We at length pitched our tent on the summit. It is but

nineteen hundred feet above the village of Princeton, and three

thousand above the level of the sea; but by this slight elevation it

is infinitely removed from the plain, and when we reached it we felt a

sense of remoteness, as if we had traveled into distant regions, to

Arabia Petræa, or the farthest East. A robin upon a staff was the

highest object in sight. Swallows were flying about us, and the

chewink and cuckoo were heard near at hand. The summit consists of a

few acres, destitute of trees, covered with bare rocks, interspersed

with blueberry bushes, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, moss,

and a fine, wiry grass. The common yellow lily and dwarf cornel grow

abundantly in the crevices of the rocks. This clear space, which is

gently rounded, is bounded a few feet lower by a thick shrubbery of

oaks, with maples, aspens, beeches, cherries, and occasionally a

mountain-ash intermingled, among which we found the bright blue

berries of the Solomon's-seal, and the fruit of the pyrola. From the

foundation of a wooden observatory, which was formerly erected on the

highest point, forming a rude, hollow structure of stone, a dozen feet

in diameter, and five or six in height, we could see Monadnock, in

simple grandeur, in the northwest, rising nearly a thousand feet

higher, still the "far blue mountain," though with an altered profile.

The first day the weather was so hazy that it was in vain we

endeavored to unravel the obscurity. It was like looking into the sky

again, and the patches of forest here and there seemed to flit like

clouds over a lower heaven. As to voyagers of an aerial Polynesia, the

earth seemed like a larger island in the ether; on every side, even as

low as we, the sky shutting down, like an unfathomable deep, around

it, a blue Pacific island, where who knows what islanders inhabit? and

as we sail near its shores we see the waving of trees and hear the

lowing of kine.

We read Virgil and Wordsworth in our tent, with new pleasure there,

while waiting for a clearer atmosphere, nor did the weather prevent

our appreciating the simple truth and beauty of Peter Bell:--

"And he had lain beside his asses,

On lofty Cheviot Hills:

"And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,

Among the rocks and winding _scars_;

Where deep and low the hamlets lie

Beneath their little patch of sky

And little lot of stars."

Who knows but this hill may one day be a Helvellyn, or even a

Parnassus, and the Muses haunt here, and other Homers frequent the

neighboring plains?

Not unconcerned Wachusett rears his head

Above the field, so late from nature won,

With patient brow reserved, as one who read

New annals in the history of man.

The blueberries which the mountain afforded, added to the milk we had

brought, made our frugal supper, while for entertainment the even-song

of the wood thrush rang along the ridge. Our eyes rested on no painted

ceiling nor carpeted hall, but on skies of Nature's painting, and

hills and forests of her embroidery. Before sunset, we rambled along

the ridge to the north, while a hawk soared still above us. It was a

place where gods might wander, so solemn and solitary, and removed

from all contagion with the plain. As the evening came on, the haze

was condensed in vapor, and the landscape became more distinctly

visible, and numerous sheets of water were brought to light.

"Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant,

Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae."

And now the tops of the villas smoke afar off,

And the shadows fall longer from the high mountains.

As we stood on the stone tower while the sun was setting, we saw the

shades of night creep gradually over the valleys of the east; and the

inhabitants went into their houses, and shut their doors, while the

moon silently rose up, and took possession of that part. And then the

same scene was repeated on the west side, as far as the Connecticut

and the Green Mountains, and the sun's rays fell on us two alone, of

all New England men.

It was the night but one before the full of the moon, so bright that

we could see to read distinctly by moonlight, and in the evening

strolled over the summit without danger. There was, by chance, a fire

blazing on Monadnock that night, which lighted up the whole western

horizon, and, by making us aware of a community of mountains, made our

position seem less solitary. But at length the wind drove us to the

shelter of our tent, and we closed its door for the night, and fell

asleep.

It was thrilling to hear the wind roar over the rocks, at intervals

when we waked, for it had grown quite cold and windy. The night was,

in its elements, simple even to majesty in that bleak place,--a bright

moonlight and a piercing wind. It was at no time darker than twilight

within the tent, and we could easily see the moon through its

transparent roof as we lay; for there was the moon still above us,

with Jupiter and Saturn on either hand, looking down on Wachusett, and

it was a satisfaction to know that they were our fellow-travelers

still, as high and out of our reach as our own destiny. Truly the

stars were given for a consolation to man. We should not know but our

life were fated to be always groveling, but it is permitted to behold

them, and surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. We see laws

which never fail, of whose failure we never conceived; and their lamps

burn all the night, too, as well as all day,--so rich and lavish is

that nature which can afford this superfluity of light.

The morning twilight began as soon as the moon had set, and we arose

and kindled our fire, whose blaze might have been seen for thirty

miles around. As the daylight increased, it was remarkable how rapidly

the wind went down. There was no dew on the summit, but coldness

supplied its place. When the dawn had reached its prime, we enjoyed

the view of a distinct horizon line, and could fancy ourselves at sea,

and the distant hills the waves in the horizon, as seen from the deck

of a vessel. The cherry-birds flitted around us, the nuthatch and

flicker were heard among the bushes, the titmouse perched within a few

feet, and the song of the wood thrush again rang along the ridge. At

length we saw the run rise up out of the sea, and shine on

Massachusetts; and from this moment the atmosphere grew more and more

transparent till the time of our departure, and we began to realize

the extent of the view, and how the earth, in some degree, answered to

the heavens in breadth, the white villages to the constellations in

the sky. There was little of the sublimity and grandeur which belong

to mountain scenery, but an immense landscape to ponder on a summer's

day. We could see how ample and roomy is nature. As far as the eye

could reach there was little life in the landscape; the few birds

that flitted past did not crowd. The travelers on the remote highways,

which intersect the country on every side, had no fellow-travelers for

miles, before or behind. On every side, the eye ranged over successive

circles of towns, rising one above another, like the terraces of a

vineyard, till they were lost in the horizon. Wachusett is, in fact,

the observatory of the State. There lay Massachusetts, spread out

before us in its length and breadth, like a map. There was the level

horizon which told of the sea on the east and south, the well-known

hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the misty summits of the

Hoosac and Green Mountains, first made visible to us the evening

before, blue and unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds which the

morning wind would dissipate, on the northwest and west. These last

distant ranges, on which the eye rests unwearied, commence with an

abrupt boulder in the north, beyond the Connecticut, and travel

southward, with three or four peaks dimly seen. But Monadnock, rearing

its masculine front in the northwest, is the grandest feature. As we

beheld it, we knew that it was the height of land between the two

rivers, on this side the valley of the Merrimack, on that of the

Connecticut, fluctuating with their blue seas of air,--these rival

vales, already teeming with Yankee men along their respective streams,

born to what destiny who shall tell? Watatic and the neighboring

hills, in this State and in New Hampshire, are a continuation of the

same elevated range on which we were standing. But that New Hampshire

bluff,--that promontory of a State,--lowering day and night on this

our State of Massachusetts, will longest haunt our dreams.

We could at length realize the place mountains occupy on the land, and

how they come into the general scheme of the universe. When first we

climb their summits and observe their lesser irregularities, we do not

give credit to the comprehensive intelligence which shaped them; but

when afterward we behold their outlines in the horizon, we confess

that the hand which moulded their opposite slopes, making one to

balance the other, worked round a deep centre, and was privy to the

plan of the universe. So is the least part of nature in its bearings

referred to all space. These lesser mountain ranges, as well as the

Alleghanies, run from northeast to southwest, and parallel with these

mountain streams are the more fluent rivers, answering to the general

direction of the coast, the bank of the great ocean stream itself.

Even the clouds, with their thin bars, fall into the same direction by

preference, and such even is the course of the prevailing winds, and

the migration of men and birds. A mountain chain determines many

things for the statesman and philosopher. The improvements of

civilization rather creep along its sides than cross its summit. How

often is it a barrier to prejudice and fanaticism! In passing over

these heights of land, through their thin atmosphere, the follies of

the plain are refined and purified; and as many species of plants do

not scale their summits, so many species of folly, no doubt, do not

cross the Alleghanies; it is only the hardy mountain-plant that creeps

quite over the ridge, and descends into the valley beyond.

We get a dim notion of the flight of birds, especially of such as fly

high in the air, by having ascended a mountain. We can now see what

landmarks mountains are to their migrations; how the Catskills and

Highlands have hardly sunk to them, when Wachusett and Monadnock open

a passage to the northeast; how they are guided, too, in their course

by the rivers and valleys; and who knows but by the stars, as well as

the mountain ranges, and not by the petty landmarks which we use. The

bird whose eye takes in the Green Mountains on the one side, and the

ocean on the other, need not be at a loss to find its way.

At noon we descended the mountain, and, having returned to the abodes

of men, turned our faces to the east again; measuring our progress,

from time to time, by the more ethereal hues which the mountain

assumed. Passing swiftly through Stillwater and Sterling, as with a

downward impetus, we found ourselves almost at home again in the green

meadows of Lancaster, so like our own Concord, for both are watered by

two streams which unite near their centres, and have many other

features in common. There is an unexpected refinement about this

scenery; level prairies of great extent, interspersed with elms and

hop-fields and groves of trees, give it almost a classic appearance.

This, it will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs. Rowlandson's

capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, but from this July

afternoon, and under that mild exterior, those times seemed as remote

as the irruption of the Goths. They were the dark age of New England.

On beholding a picture of a New England village as it then appeared,

with a fair open prospect, and a light on trees and river, as if it

were broad noon, we find we had not thought the sun shone in those

days, or that men lived in broad daylight then. We do not imagine the

sun shining on hill and valley during Philip's war, nor on the

war-path of Paugus, or Standish, or Church, or Lovell, with serene

summer weather, but a dim twilight or night did those events transpire

in. They must have fought in the shade of their own dusky deeds.

At length, as we plodded along the dusty roads, our thoughts became as

dusty as they; all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or

proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the

confused material of thought, and we found ourselves mechanically

repeating some familiar measure which timed with our tread; some verse

of the Robin Hood ballads, for instance, which one can recommend to

travel by:--

"Sweavens are swift, sayd lyttle John,

As the wind blows over the hill;

For if it be never so loud this night,

To-morrow it may be still."

And so it went, up-hill and down, till a stone interrupted the line,

when a new verse was chosen:--

"His shoote it was but loosely shott,

Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,

For it mett one of the sheriffe's men,

And William a Trent was slaine."

There is, however, this consolation to the most wayworn traveler, upon

the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly

symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into

the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon,

from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his

old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it

is yet sincere experience.

Leaving the Nashua, we changed our route a little, and arrived at

Stillriver Village, in the western part of Harvard, just as the sun

was setting. From this place, which lies to the northward, upon the

western slope of the same range of hills on which we had spent the

noon before, in the adjacent town, the prospect is beautiful, and the

grandeur of the mountain outlines unsurpassed. There was such a repose

and quiet here at this hour, as if the very hillsides were enjoying

the scene; and as we passed slowly along, looking back over the

country we had traversed, and listening to the evening song of the

robin, we could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the

bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume always a

crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.

And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let

us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We

will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level

life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest

valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour,

as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen

from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command

an uninterrupted horizon.

We rested that night at Harvard, and the next morning, while one bent

his steps to the nearer village of Groton, the other took his

separate and solitary way to the peaceful meadows of Concord; but let

him not forget to record the brave hospitality of a farmer and his

wife, who generously entertained him at their board, though the poor

wayfarer could only congratulate the one on the continuance of hay

weather, and silently accept the kindness of the other. Refreshed by

this instance of generosity, no less than by the substantial viands

set before him, he pushed forward with new vigor, and reached the

banks of the Concord before the sun had climbed many degrees into the

heavens.

THE LANDLORD

Under the one word "house" are included the schoolhouse, the

almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwelling-house; and the meanest

shed or cave in which men live contains the elements of all these. But

nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house. The

Parthenon, St. Peter's, the Gothic minster, the palace, the hovel, are

but imperfect executions of an imperfect idea. Who would dwell in

them? Perhaps to the eye of the gods the cottage is more holy than the

Parthenon, for they look down with no especial favor upon the shrines

formally dedicated to them, and that should be the most sacred roof

which shelters most of humanity. Surely, then, the gods who are most

interested in the human race preside over the Tavern, where especially

men congregate. Methinks I see the thousand shrines erected to

Hospitality shining afar in all countries, as well Mahometan and

Jewish as Christian, khans and caravansaries and inns, whither all

pilgrims without distinction resort.

Likewise we look in vain, east or west over the earth, to find the

perfect man; but each represents only some particular excellence. The

Landlord is a man of more open and general sympathies, who possesses a

spirit of hospitality which is its own reward, and feeds and shelters

men from pure love of the creatures. To be sure, this profession is as

often filled by imperfect characters, and such as have sought it from

unworthy motives, as any other, but so much the more should we prize

the true and honest Landlord when we meet with him.

Who has not imagined to himself a country inn, where the traveler

shall really feel _in_, and at home, and at his public house, who was

before at his private house?--whose host is indeed a _host_, and a

_lord_ of the _land_, a self-appointed brother of his race; called to

his place, beside, by all the winds of heaven and his good genius, as

truly as the preacher is called to preach; a man of such universal

sympathies, and so broad and genial a human nature, that he would fain

sacrifice the tender but narrow ties of private friendship to a broad,

sunshiny, fair-weather-and-foul friendship for his race; who loves

men, not as a philosopher, with philanthropy, nor as an overseer of

the poor, with charity, but by a necessity of his nature, as he loves

dogs and horses; and standing at his open door from morning till night

would fain see more and more of them come along the highway, and is

never satiated. To him the sun and moon are but travelers, the one by

day and the other by night; and they too patronize his house. To his

imagination all things travel save his sign-post and himself; and

though you may be his neighbor for years, he will show you only the

civilities of the road. But on the other hand, while nations and

individuals are alike selfish and exclusive, he loves all men equally;

and if he treats his nearest neighbor as a stranger, since he has

invited all nations to share his hospitality, the farthest-traveled is

in some measure kindred to him who takes him into the bosom of his

family.

He keeps a house of entertainment at the sign of the Black Horse or

the Spread Eagle, and is known far and wide, and his fame travels with

increasing radius every year. All the neighborhood is in his interest,

and if the traveler ask how far to a tavern, he receives some such

answer as this: "Well, sir, there's a house about three miles from

here, where they haven't taken down their sign yet; but it's only ten

miles to Slocum's, and that's a capital house, both for man and

beast." At three miles he passes a cheerless barrack, standing

desolate behind its sign-post, neither public nor private, and has

glimpses of a discontented couple who have mistaken their calling. At

ten miles see where the Tavern stands,--really an _entertaining_

prospect,--so public and inviting that only the rain and snow do not

enter. It is no gay pavilion, made of bright stuffs, and furnished

with nuts and gingerbread, but as plain and sincere as a caravansary;

located in no Tarrytown, where you receive only the civilities of

commerce, but far in the fields it exercises a primitive hospitality,

amid the fresh scent of new hay and raspberries, if it be summer-time,

and the tinkling of cow-bells from invisible pastures; for it is a

land flowing with milk and honey, and the newest milk courses in a

broad, deep stream across the premises.

In these retired places the tavern is first of all a

house,--elsewhere, last of all, or never,--and warms and shelters its

inhabitants. It is as simple and sincere in its essentials as the

caves in which the first men dwelt, but it is also as open and public.

The traveler steps across the threshold, and lo! he too is master, for

he only can be called proprietor of the house here who behaves with

most propriety in it. The Landlord stands clear back in nature, to my

imagination, with his axe and spade felling trees and raising potatoes

with the vigor of a pioneer; with Promethean energy making nature

yield her increase to supply the wants of so many; and he is not so

exhausted, nor of so short a stride, but that he comes forward even to

the highway to this wide hospitality and publicity. Surely, he has

solved some of the problems of life. He comes in at his back door,

holding a log fresh cut for the hearth upon his shoulder with one

hand, while he greets the newly arrived traveler with the other.

Here at length we have free range, as not in palaces, nor cottages,

nor temples, and intrude nowhere. All the secrets of housekeeping are

exhibited to the eyes of men, above and below, before and behind. This

is the necessary way to live, men have confessed, in these days, and

shall he skulk and hide? And why should we have any serious disgust at

kitchens? Perhaps they are the holiest recess of the house. There is

the hearth, after all,--and the settle, and the fagots, and the

kettle, and the crickets. We have pleasant reminiscences of these.

They are the heart, the left ventricle, the very vital part of the

house. Here the real and sincere life which we meet in the streets was

actually fed and sheltered. Here burns the taper that cheers the

lonely traveler by night, and from this hearth ascend the smokes that

populate the valley to his eyes by day. On the whole, a man may not be

so little ashamed of any other part of his house, for here is his

sincerity and earnest, at least. It may not be here that the besoms

are plied most,--it is not here that they need to be, for dust will

not settle on the kitchen floor more than in nature.

Hence it will not do for the Landlord to possess too fine a nature. He

must have health above the common accidents of life, subject to no

modern fashionable diseases; but no taste, rather a vast relish or

appetite. His sentiments on all subjects will be delivered as freely

as the wind blows; there is nothing private or individual in them,

though still original, but they are public, and of the hue of the

heavens over his house,--a certain out-of-door obviousness and

transparency not to be disputed. What he does, his manners are not to

be complained of, though abstractly offensive, for it is what man

does, and in him the race is exhibited. When he eats, he is liver and

bowels and the whole digestive apparatus to the company, and so all

admit the thing is done. He must have no idiosyncrasies, no particular

bents or tendencies to this or that, but a general, uniform, and

healthy development, such as his portly person indicates, offering

himself equally on all sides to men. He is not one of your peaked and

inhospitable men of genius, with particular tastes, but, as we said

before, has one uniform relish, and taste which never aspires higher

than a tavern-sign, or the cut of a weather-cock. The man of genius,

like a dog with a bone, or the slave who has swallowed a diamond, or a

patient with the gravel, sits afar and retired, off the road, hangs

out no sign of refreshment for man and beast, but says, by all

possible hints and signs, I wish to be alone,--good-by,--farewell. But

the Landlord can afford to live without privacy. He entertains no

private thought, he cherishes no solitary hour, no Sabbath-day, but

thinks,--enough to assert the dignity of reason,--and talks, and reads

the newspaper. What he does not tell to one traveler he tells to

another. He never wants to be alone, but sleeps, wakes, eats, drinks,

sociably, still remembering his race. He walks abroad through the

thoughts of men, and the Iliad and Shakespeare are tame to him, who

hears the rude but homely incidents of the road from every traveler.

The mail might drive through his brain in the midst of his most lonely

soliloquy without disturbing his equanimity, provided it brought

plenty of news and passengers. There can be no _pro_fanity where there

is no fane behind, and the whole world may see quite round him.

Perchance his lines have fallen to him in dustier places, and he has

heroically sat down where two roads meet, or at the Four Corners or

the Five Points, and his life is sublimely trivial for the good of

men. The dust of travel blows ever in his eyes, and they preserve

their clear, complacent look. The hourlies and half-hourlies, the

dailies and weeklies, whirl on well-worn tracks, round and round his

house, as if it were the goal in the stadium, and still he sits within

in unruffled serenity, with no show of retreat. His neighbor dwells

timidly behind a screen of poplars and willows, and a fence with

sheaves of spears at regular intervals, or defended against the tender

palms of visitors by sharp spikes,--but the traveler's wheels rattle

over the door-step of the tavern, and he cracks his whip in the entry.

He is truly glad to see you, and sincere as the bull's-eye over his

door. The traveler seeks to find, wherever he goes, some one who will

stand in this broad and catholic relation to him, who will be an

inhabitant of the land to him a stranger, and represent its human

nature, as the rock stands for its inanimate nature; and this is he.

As his crib furnishes provender for the traveler's horse, and his

larder provisions for his appetite, so his conversation furnishes the

necessary aliment to his spirits. He knows very well what a man wants,

for he is a man himself, and as it were the farthest-traveled, though

he has never stirred from his door. He understands his needs and

destiny. He would be well fed and lodged, there can be no doubt, and

have the transient sympathy of a cheerful companion, and of a heart

which always prophesies fair weather. And after all the greatest men,

even, want much more the sympathy which every honest fellow can give,

than that which the great only can impart. If he is not the most

upright, let us allow him this praise, that he is the most downright

of men. He has a hand to shake and to be shaken, and takes a sturdy

and unquestionable interest in you, as if he had assumed the care of

you, but if you will break your neck, he will even give you the best

advice as to the method.

The great poets have not been ungrateful to their landlords. Mine host

of the Tabard Inn, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, was an

honor to his profession:--

"A semely man our Hoste was, with alle,

For to han been a marshal in an halle.

A large man he was, with eyen stepe;

A fairer burgeis was ther non in Chepe:

Bold of his speche, and wise, and well ytaught,

And of manhood him lacked righte naught.

Eke thereto was he right a mery man,

And after souper plaien he began,

And spake of mirthe amonges other thinges,

Whan that we hadden made our reckoninges."

He is the true house-band, and centre of the company,--of greater

fellowship and practical social talent than any. He it is that

proposes that each shall tell a tale to while away the time to

Canterbury, and leads them himself, and concludes with his own tale,--

"Now, by my fader's soule that is ded,

But ye be mery, smiteth of my hed:

Hold up your hondes withouten more speche."

If we do not look up to the Landlord, we look round for him on all

emergencies, for he is a man of infinite experience, who unites hands

with wit. He is a more public character than a statesman,--a publican,

and not consequently a sinner; and surely, he, if any, should be

exempted from taxation and military duty.

Talking with our host is next best and instructive to talking with

one's self. It is a more conscious soliloquy; as it were, to speak

generally, and try what we would say provided we had an audience. He

has indulgent and open ears, and does not require petty and particular

statements. "Heigh-ho!" exclaims the traveler. Them's my sentiments,

thinks mine host, and stands ready for what may come next, expressing

the purest sympathy by his demeanor. "Hot as blazes!" says the other.

"Hard weather, sir,--not much stirring nowadays," says he. He is wiser

than to contradict his guest in any case; he lets him go on; he lets

him travel.

The latest sitter leaves him standing far in the night, prepared to

live right on, while suns rise and set, and his "good-night" has as

brisk a sound as his "good-morning;" and the earliest riser finds him

tasting his liquors in the bar ere flies begin to buzz, with a

countenance fresh as the morning star over the sanded floor,--and not

as one who had watched all night for travelers. And yet, if beds be

the subject of conversation, it will appear that no man has been a

sounder sleeper in his time.

Finally, as for his moral character, we do not hesitate to say that he

has no grain of vice or meanness in him, but represents just that

degree of virtue which all men relish without being obliged to

respect. He is a good man, as his bitters are good,--an unquestionable

goodness. Not what is called a good man,--good to be considered, as a

work of art in galleries and museums,--but a good fellow, that is,

good to be associated with. Who ever thought of the religion of an

innkeeper,--whether he was joined to the Church, partook of the

sacrament, said his prayers, feared God, or the like? No doubt he has

had his experiences, has felt a change, and is a firm believer in the

perseverance of the saints. In this last, we suspect, does the

peculiarity of his religion consist. But he keeps an inn, and not a

conscience. How many fragrant charities and sincere social virtues are

implied in this daily offering of himself to the public! He cherishes

good-will to all, and gives the wayfarer as good and honest advice to

direct him on his road as the priest.

To conclude, the tavern will compare favorably with the church. The

church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the

tavern is where they are to take effect, and if the former are good,

the latter cannot be bad.

A WINTER WALK

The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with

feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a

summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The meadow

mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a

hollow tree in the depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the squirrel, and

the fox have all been housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the

hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. The earth

itself has slept, as it were its first, not its last sleep, save when

some street-sign or wood-house door has faintly creaked upon its

hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her midnight work,--the only sound

awake 'twixt Venus and Mars,--advertising us of a remote inward

warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are met together,

but where it is very bleak for men to stand. But while the earth has

slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending,

as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over

all the fields.

We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter

morning. The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill;

the broadened sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light,

which enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is

impressive. The floor creaks under our feet as we move toward the

window to look abroad through some clear space over the fields. We

see the roofs stand under their snow burden. From the eaves and fences

hang stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering

some concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky

on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see fantastic forms

stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature

had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for

man's art.

Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step

abroad to face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of

their sparkle, and a dull, leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid

brazen light in the east proclaims the approach of day, while the

western landscape is dim and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre

Tartarean light, like the shadowy realms. They are Infernal sounds

only that you hear,--the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the

chopping of wood, the lowing of kine, all seem to come from Pluto's

barnyard and beyond the Styx,--not for any melancholy they suggest,

but their twilight bustle is too solemn and mysterious for earth. The

recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard, remind us that each

hour of the night is crowded with events, and the primeval nature is

still working and making tracks in the snow. Opening the gate, we

tread briskly along the lone country road, crunching the dry and

crisped snow under our feet, or aroused by the sharp, clear creak of

the wood-sled, just starting for the distant market, from the early

farmer's door, where it has lain the summer long, dreaming amid the

chips and stubble; while far through the drifts and powdered windows

we see the farmer's early candle, like a paled star, emitting a lonely

beam, as if some severe virtue were at its matins there. And one by

one the smokes begin to ascend from the chimneys amid the trees and

snows.

The sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell,

The stiffened air exploring in the dawn,

And making slow acquaintance with the day

Delaying now upon its heavenward course,

In wreathèd loiterings dallying with itself,

With as uncertain purpose and slow deed

As its half-wakened master by the hearth,

Whose mind still slumbering and sluggish thoughts

Have not yet swept into the onward current

Of the new day;--and now it streams afar,

The while the chopper goes with step direct,

And mind intent to swing the early axe.

First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad

His early scout, his emissary, smoke,

The earliest, latest pilgrim from the roof,

To feel the frosty air, inform the day;

And while he crouches still beside the hearth,

Nor musters courage to unbar the door,

It has gone down the glen with the light wind,

And o'er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath,

Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,

And warmed the pinions of the early bird;

And now, perchance, high in the crispy air,

Has caught sight of the day o'er the earth's edge,

And greets its master's eye at his low door,

As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky.