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THE DUNE COUNTRY
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE VOICES OF THE DUNES
QUARTO BOARDS $6.00 NET
ETCHING:
A PRACTICAL TREATISE
CROWN QUARTO CLOTH $2.50 NET
[Illustration:
The Dune Country.]
THE
DUNE COUNTRY
_By_
EARL H. REED
AUTHOR OF
“THE VOICES OF THE DUNES”
“ETCHING: A PRACTICAL TREATISE”
WITH SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
TORONTO: S. B. GUNDY, MCMXVI
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
PRESS OF
EATON & GETTINGER
NEW YORK, U.S.A.
_To_ C. C. R.
INTRODUCTION
The text and illustrations in this book are intended to depict a strange
and picturesque country, with some of its interesting wild life, and a
few of the unique human characters that inhabit it.
The big ranges of sand dunes that skirt the southern and eastern shores
of Lake Michigan, and the strip of sparsely settled broken country back
of them, contain a rich fund of material for the artist, poet, and
nature lover, as well as for those who would seek out the oddities of
human kind in by-paths remote from much travelled highways.
In the following pages are some of the results of numerous sketching
trips into this region, covering a series of years. Much material was
found that was beyond the reach of the etching needle or the lead
pencil, but many things seemed to come particularly within the province
of those mediums, and they have both been freely used.
While many interesting volumes could be filled by pencil and pen, this
story of the dunes and the “back country” has been condensed as much as
seems consistent with the portrayal of their essential characteristics.
We are lured into the wilds by a natural instinct. Contact with nature’s
forms and moods is a necessary stimulant to our spiritual and
intellectual life. The untrammelled mind may find inspiration and growth
in congenial isolation, for in it there are no competitive or
antagonistic influences to divert or destroy its fruitage.
Comparatively isolated human types are usually more interesting, for the
reason that individual development and natural ruggedness have not been
rounded and polished by social attrition.
Social attrition would have ruined “old Sipes,” a part of whose story is
in this book, and if it had ever been mentioned to him he probably would
have thought that it was something that lived up in the woods that he
had never seen.
Fictitious names have, for various reasons, been substituted for some of
the characters in the following chapters. One of the old derelicts
objected strenuously to the use of his name. “I don’t want to be in no
book,” said he. “You can draw all the pitchers o’ me you want to, an’
use ’em, but as fer names, there’s nothin’ doin’.”
“Old Sipes” suggested that if “Doc Looney’s pitcher was put in a book,
some o’ them females might see it an’ locate ’im,” but as the “Doc” has
now disappeared this danger is probably remote.
E. H. R.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE DUNE COUNTRY 15
II. THE GULLS AND TERNS 39
III. THE TURTLES 47
IV. THE CROWS 55
V. “OLD SIPES” 73
VI. “HAPPY CAL” 97
VII. “CATFISH JOHN” 115
VIII. “DOC LOONEY” 149
IX. THE MYSTERIOUS PROWLER 169
X. “J. LEDYARD SYMINGTON” 179
XI. THE BACK COUNTRY 193
XII. JUDGE CASSIUS BLOSSOM 229
XIII. THE WINDING RIVER 255
XIV. THE RED ARROW 279
THE DUNE COUNTRY
[Illustration] CHAPTER I
THE DUNE COUNTRY
While there are immense stretches of sand dunes in other parts of the
world, it is of a particular dune country, to which many journeys have
been made, and in which many days have been spent, that this story will
be told.
The dunes sweep for many miles along the Lake Michigan coasts. They are
post-glacial, and are undergoing slow continual changes, both in form
and place,--the loose sand responding lightly to the action of varying
winds.
The “fixed dunes” retain general forms, more or less stable, owing to
the scraggly and irregular vegetation that has obtained a foothold upon
them, but the “wandering dunes” move constantly. The fine sand is wafted
in shimmering veils across the smooth expanses, over the ridges to the
lee slopes. It swirls in soft clouds from the wind-swept summits, and,
in the course of time, whole forests are engulfed. After years of
entombment, the dead trunks and branches occasionally reappear in the
path of the destroyer, and bend back with gnarled arms in self-defence,
seeming to challenge their flinty foe to further conflict.
The general movement is east and southeast, owing to the prevalence of
west and northwest winds in this region, which gather force in coming
over the waters of the lake. The finer grains, which are washed up on
the beach, are carried inland, the coarser particles remaining near the
shore. The off-shore winds, being broken by the topography of the
country, exercise a less but still noticeable influence. The loose
masses retreat perceptibly toward the beach when these winds prevail for
any great length of time.
To many this region simply means a distant line of sandy crests,
tree-flecked and ragged, against the sky on the horizon--a mysterious
and unknown waste, without commercial value, and therefore useless from
a utilitarian standpoint.
It is not the land, but the landscape, not the utility, but the romantic
and interesting wild life among these yellow ranges that is of value. It
is the picturesque and poetic quality that we find in this land of
enchantment that appeals to us, and it is because of this love in our
lives that we now enter this strange country.
The landscapes among the dunes are not for the realist, not for the cold
and discriminating recorder of facts, nor the materialist who would
weigh with exact scales or look with scientific eyes. It is a country
for the dreamer and the poet, who would cherish its secrets, open
enchanted locks, and explore hidden vistas, which the Spirit of the
Dunes has kept for those who understand.
The winds have here fashioned wondrous forms with the shuttles of the
air and the mutable sands. Shadowy fortresses have been reared and
bannered with the pines. Illusive distant towers are tinged by the
subtle hues of the afterglows, as the twilights softly blend them into
the glooms. In the fading light we may fancy the outlines of frowning
castles and weird battlements, with ghostly figures along their heights.
If the desert was of concrete, its mystery and spiritual power would not
exist. The deadly silences which nature leaves among her ruins are
appalling, unless brightened by her voices of enduring hope. It is then
that our spirits revive with her.
There is an unutterable gloom in the hush of the rocky immensities,
where, in dim ages past, the waters have slowly worn away the stony
barriers of the great canyons among the mountains. The countless
centuries seem to hang over them like a pall, when no living green comes
forth among the stones to nourish the soul with faith in life to come.
We walk in these profound solitudes with an irresistible sense of
spiritual depression.
On Nature’s great palette green is the color of hope. We see it in the
leaves when the miracle of the spring unfolds them, and on the ocean’s
troubled waters when the sun comes from behind the curtains of the sky.
Even the tiny mosses cover with their mantles the emblems of despair
when decay begins its subtle work on the fallen tree and broken stump.
We find in the dune country whatever we take to it. The repose of the
yellow hills, which have been sculptured by the winds and the years,
reflects the solemnity of our minds, and eternal hope is sustained by
the expectant life that creeps from every fertile crevice.
While the wandering masses are fascinating, it is among the more
permanent forms, where nature has laid her restraining hand, that we
find the most picturesque material. It is here that the reconstructive
processes have begun which impart life to the waste places. At first,
among these wastes, one is likely to have a sense of loneliness. The
long, undulating lines of ridged sand inspire thoughts of hopeless
melancholy. The sparse vegetation, which in its struggle for life
pathetically seizes and holds the partially fertile spots among these
ever-shifting masses, has the appearance of broken submission. The
wildly tangled roots--derelicts of the sands--which have been deserted
and left to bleach in the sun by the slow movement of the great hills,
emphasize the feeling of isolation. The changing winds may again give
them a winding sheet, but as a part of nature’s refuse, they are slowly
and steadily being resolved back into her crucible.
[Illustration:
“DERELICTS OF THE SANDS”]
To the colorist the dunes present ever-changing panoramas of hue and
tone. Every cloud that trails its purple, phantom-like shadow across
them can call forth the resources of his palette, and he can find
inspiration in the high nooks where the pines cling to their perilous
anchorage.
The etcher may revel in their wealth of line. The harmonic undulations
of the long, serrated crests, with sharp accents of gnarled roots and
stunted trees, offer infinite possibilities in composition. To the
imaginative enthusiast, seeking poetic forms of line expression, these
dwarfed, neglected, crippled, and wasted things become subtle units in
artistic arrangement.
As in all landscape, we find much material in these subjects that is
entirely useless from an artistic standpoint. The thoughtful translator
must be rigidly selective, and his work must go to other minds, to which
he appeals, stripped of dross and unencumbered with superfluities. An
ugly and ill-arranged mass of light and shade, that may disfigure the
foreground, may be eliminated from the composition, but the graceful and
slender weed growing near it may be used. A low, dark cloud in the
distance may be carried a little farther away, if necessary, or it may
be blown entirely away, if another cloud--floating only in the realm of
imagination--will furnish the desired note of harmony. Truth need not
necessarily be fact, but we must not include in our composition that
which is not possible or natural to our subject. Representation of fact
is not art, in its pure sense, but effective expression of thought,
which fact may inspire, is art--and there is but one art, although there
are many mediums.
[Illustration:
IN THE WILD PLACES]
One must feel the spirit and poetry of the dunes, if he deals with them
as an artist who would send their story into the world. The magic of
successful artistic translation changes the sense of desolation into an
impression of wild, weird beauty and romantic charm. It is the wildness,
the mystery, the deep solemnity, and the infinite grandeur of this
region which furnish themes of appealing picturesqueness.
Man has changed or destroyed natural scenery wherever he has come into
practical contact with it. The fact that these wonderful hills are left
to us is simply because he has not yet been able to carry away and use
the sand of which they are composed. He has dragged the pines from their
storm-scarred tops, and is utilizing their sands for the elevation of
city railway tracks. Shrieking, rasping wheels now pass over them,
instead of the crow’s shadow, the cry of the tern, or the echo of waves
from glistening and untrampled shores.
The turmoil and bustle of the outside world is not heard on the placid
stretches of these quiet undulations. Here the weary spirit finds repose
among elemental forms which the ravages of civilization have left
unspoiled. If we take beautiful minds and beautiful hearts into the dune
country, we will find only beauty in it; and if we have not the love of
beauty, we walk in darkness.
Filmy veils of white mist gather in the hollows during the still, cool
hours of the night, and begin to move like curling smoke wreaths with
the first faint breaths of dawn. The early hours of the morning are full
of strange enchantment, and dawn on the dunes brings many wonders. When
the first gray tones of light appear, the night-prowlers seek seclusion,
and the stillness is broken by the crows. A single note is heard from
among the boughs of a far-off pine, and in a few moments the air is
filled with the noisy conversation of these interesting birds--mingled
with the cries of the gulls and terns, which have come in from the lake
and are searching for the refuse of the night waves. The beams of a
great light burst through the trees--the leaves and the sands are
touched with gold--and the awakening of the hills has come.
The twilights bring forth manifold beauties which the bright glare of
the day has kept within their hiding-places. The rich purples that have
been concealed among secret recesses creep out on
[Illustration: (_From the Author’s Etching_)
DAWN IN THE HILLS]
the open spaces to meet the silvery light of the rising moon, and the
colors of the dusk come to weave a web of phantasy over the landscape.
[Illustration: (_From the Author’s Etching_)
TWILIGHT ON THE DUNES]
It is then that the movement of nocturnal life commences and the
tragedies of the night begin. A fleeting silhouette of a wing intersects
the moon’s disc, and a dark shadowy thing moves swiftly across the
sky-line of the trees. An attentive listener will hear many strange and
mysterious sounds. The Dune People are coming forth to seek their food
from God.
[Illustration:
“A FLEETING SILHOUETTE OF A WING
INTERSECTS THE MOON’S DISC”]
When the morning comes, if the air is still, we can find the stories on
the sand. Its surface is interlaced with thousands of little tracks and
trails, leading in all directions. The tracks of the toads, and the
hundreds of creeping insects on which they subsist, are all over the
open places, crossed and recrossed many times by the footmarks of crows,
herons, gulls, sandpipers, and other birds.
The movement of the four-footed life is mostly nocturnal. We find the
imprints of the fox, raccoon, mink, muskrat, skunk, white-footed mouse,
and other quadrupeds, that have been active during the night. To the
practiced eye these trails are readily distinguishable, and often traces
are found of a tragedy that has been enacted in the darkness. Some
confused marks, and a mussy-looking spot on the sand, record a brief
struggle for existence, and perhaps a few mangled remains, with some
scattered feathers or bits of fur, are left to tell the tale. A weak
life has gone out to support a stronger.
With the exception of the insects, the mice are the most frequent
victims. Their hiding-places under tufts of grass, old stumps and
decayed wood are ruthlessly sought out and the little families eagerly
devoured. The owls glide silently over the wastes, searching the deep
shadows for the small, velvet-footed creatures whose helplessness
renders them easy prey. They are subject to immutable law and must
perish.
Much of the mysterious lure of the dunes is in the magnificent sweep of
the great lake along the wild shores. Its restless waters are the
complement of the indolent sands. The distant bands of deep blue and
green, dappled with dancing white-caps, in the vistas through the
openings, impart vivid color accents to the grays and neutral tones of
the foregrounds.
No great mind has ever flowered to its fullness that was insensible to
the allurements of a large body of water. It may be likened to a human
soul. It is now tempestuous, and now placid. Beneath its surface are
unknown caverns and unsounded depths into which light never goes. If by
chance some piercing ray should ever reach them, wondrous beauty might
be revealed.
The waters of the lake are never perfectly still. In calms that seem
absolute, a careful eye will find at least a slight undulation.
On quiet days the little waves ripple and lisp along the miles of wet
sand, and the delicate streaks of oscillating foam creep away in a
feathery and uncertain line, that fades and steals around a distant
curve in the shore.
[Illustration: (_From the Author’s Etching_)
THE SONG OF THE EAST SHORE]
After the storms the long ground-swells roll in for days, beating their
rhythmic measures, and unfolding their snowy veils before them as they
come.
The echoes of the roar of the surf among the distant dunes pervade them
with solemn sound. An indefinable spirit of mute resistance and power
broods in the inert masses. They seem to be holding back mighty and
remote forces that beat upon their barriers.
The color fairies play out on the bosom of the lake in the silver
radiance of the moon and stars, and marvelous tones are spread upon it
by the sun and clouds. Invisible brushes, charged with celestial
pigments, seem to sweep over its great expanse, mingling prismatic hues
and changing them fitfully, in wayward fancy, as a master might delight
to play with a medium that he had conquered. Fugitive cloud shadows move
swiftly over areas of turquoise and amethyst. Fleeting iridescent hues
revel with the capricious breezes in loving companionship.
When the storm gods lash the lake with whistling winds, and send their
sullen dark array through the skies, and the music of the tempest blends
with song of the surges on the shore, the color tones seem to become
vocal and to mingle their cadences with the voices of the gale.
We may look from the higher dune tops upon panoramas of surpassing
splendor. There are piles on piles of sandy hills, accented with green
masses and solitary pines. These highways of the winds and storms, with
their glittering crowns and shadowy defiles, sweep into dim perspective.
Their noble curves become smaller and smaller, until they are folded
away and lost on the horizon’s hazy rim.
[Illustration: (_From the Author’s Etching_)
HIGHWAYS OF THE WINDS]
A sinuous ribbon of sunlit beach winds along the line of the breakers,
and meets the point of a misty headland far away.
The blue immensity of the lake glistens, and is flecked with foam. White
plumes are tossing and waving along the sky-line. In the foreground
little groups of sandpipers are running nimbly along the edges of the
incoming waves, racing after them as they retreat, and lightly taking
wing when they come too near. There are flocks of stately gulls,
balancing themselves with set wings, high in the wind, and a few terns
are skimming along the crests. The gray figures of two or three herons
are stalking about, with much dignity, near some driftwood that dots the
dry sand farther up the shore.
Colors rare and glorious are in the sky. The sun is riding down in a
chariot of gold and purple, attended by a retinue of clouds in
resplendent robes. The twilight comes, the picture fades, but the spell
remains.
Intrepid voyagers from the Old World journeyed along these primitive
coasts centuries ago. Their footprints were soon washed away in the surf
lines, but the romance of their trails still rests upon the sands that
they traversed.
In years of obscure legend, birch-bark canoes were drawn out on the
gleaming beach by red men who carried weapons of stone. They hunted and
fought among the yellow hills. They saw them basking under summer suns,
and swept by the furies of winter storms. From their tops they watched
the dying glories of the afterglows in the western skies. They saw the
great lake shimmer in still airs, and heard the pounding of remorseless
waters in its sterner moods. They who carried the weapons of stone are
gone, and time has hidden them in the silence of the past.
Out in the mysterious depths of the lake are pale sandy floors that no
eye has ever seen. The mobile particles are shifted and eddied into
strange shadowy forms by the inconstant and unknown currents that flow
in the gloom. There are white bones and ghostly timbers there which are
buried and again uncovered. There are dunes under the waters, as well as
on the shores. Slimy mosses creep along their shelving sides and over
their pallid tops into profound chasms beyond. Finny life moves among
the subaqueous vegetation that thrives in the fertile areas, and out
over the smooth wastes, but this is a world concealed. Our pictures are
in the air.
When winter lays its mantle of snow upon the country of the dunes the
whitened crests loom in softened lines. The contours become spectral in
their chaste robes. Along the frosty summits the intricacies of the
naked trees and branches, in their winter sleep, are woven delicately
against the moody skies, and the hills, far away, draped in their chill
raiment, stand in faint relief on the gray horizon. The black companies
of the crows wing across the snow-clad heights in desultory flight.
When the bitter blasts come out of the clouds in the north, the light
snow scurries over the hoary tops into the shelters of the hollows. Out
in the ice fields on the lake grinding masses heave with the angry
surges that seek the shore. Crystal fragments, shattered and splintered,
shine in the dim light, far out along the margins of the open, turbulent
water. Great piles of broken ice have been flung along the beach, heaped
into bewildering forms by the billows, and a few gulls skirt the ragged
frozen mounds for possible stray bits of food.
The wind and the cold have builded grim ramparts for the sunshine and
the April rains to conquer.
[Illustration: (_From the Author’s Etching_)
“HERALDS OF THE STORM”]
CHAPTER II
THE GULLS AND TERNS
The gulls are a picturesque and interesting feature of dune life. These
gray and white birds, while they do not entirely avoid human
association, have few of the home-like charms of most of our feathered
neighbors.
“Catfish John,” the old fisherman with whom I often talked about the
birds and animals in the dune country, had very little use for them. He
said that “they flopped ’round a whole lot, an’ seemed to keep a goin’.”
He “didn’t never find no eggs, an’ they didn’t seem to set anywheres.
They git away with the bait when its left out, an’ they seem mostly to
live off’n fish an’ dead things they find on the beach an’ floatin’
round in the lake. They’ll tackle a mouthful big enough to choke a horse
if they like the looks of it.”
He thought that “them that roosted out on the net stakes didn’t go to
sleep entirely, or they’d slip off in the night.”
The gull has many charms for the ornithologist and the poet. He is
valuable to the artist, as an accent in the sky, when he is on the
wing, giving a thrill of life to the most desolate landscape.
[Illustration: “THEM THAT ROOSTED OUT ON THE NET STAKES”]
He is interesting to the eye when proudly walking along the beach, or
sitting silently, with hundreds of others, in solemn conclave on the
shore. Old piles and floating objects in the lake have an added interest
with his trim figure perched upon them. The perched birds seem magnified
and ghostly when one comes suddenly upon them in the fog and they
disappear with shrill cries into the mists.
There is no gleam of human interest in the eye of a gull. It is fierce,
cold, and utterly wild. The birds we love most are those that nest in
the land in which we live. The home is the real bond among living
things, and our feathered friends creep easily into our affections when
we can hear their love songs and watch their home life.
The transient winged tribes, that come and go--like ships on the
sea--and rear their young in other lands, arouse our poetic reflections,
challenge our admiration, and excite our love of the beautiful. They
delight our eyes but not our hearts.
The graceful forms of the gulls give an ethereal note of exaltation to
the spirit of the landscape--a suggestion of the Infinite--as they soar
in long curves in the azure blue, or against the dark clouds that roll
up in portentous masses from the distant horizon and sweep across the
heavens over the great lake. They are the heralds of the storms, and a
typical expression of life in the sky.
Their matchless grace on the wing, as they wheel in the teeth of the
tempest or glide with set pinions in the currents of the angry winds,
makes them a part of nature’s dramas in the heavens--aloof and remote
from earthly things--mingling with the unseen forces and mysteries of
the Great Unknown.
These rovers of the clouds seem to love no abodes but the stormy skies
and foaming waves. Their flights are desultory when the winds are still.
When the calms brood over the face of the waters, they congregate on the
glassy surface, like little white fleets at anchor, and rest for hours,
until hunger again takes them into the air.
They often leave the lake and soar over the dune country on windy days,
searching far inland for food, but when night comes they return to the
water.
In early August they come down from the Lake Superior country and from
the more distant north, where perhaps many of them have spent the summer
near the arctic circle. They bring with them their big brown young, from
the rocky islands in those remote regions, and to these islands they
will return in the spring. The young birds do not don their silver-gray
plumage until the second year.
In the autumn the unseen paths in the sky are filled with countless
wings on their way to the tropics, but the gulls remain to haunt the
bare landscapes and the chill waters of the lake, until the return of
the great multitudes of migrant birds in April or May, when they leave
for their northern homes.
In the wake of the gulls come the terns--those graceful, gliding little
creatures in pearl-gray robes--which skim and hover over the waves, and
search them for their daily food.
There is something peculiarly elf-like and wispy in their flight. Agile
and keen eyed, with their mosquito-like bills pointed downward, they
dart furtively, like water-sprites, along the crests of the billows,
seeming to winnow the foam and spray.
With low plaintive cries the scattered flocks follow the surf lines
against the wind and the dipping wings can be seen far out over the
lake.
They often pause in the air, and drop like plummets, entirely out of
sight under water, in pursuit of unsuspecting small fish, to reappear
with the wiggling tails of the little victims protruding from their
bills. Many thousands of them patrol the shores and waters, but they
also are transients, and soon wing their ways to colder or warmer
climes.
The nature lover finds manifold charms in the bird life of the dune
country. There are many varieties to interest him. While we may endeavor
to restrict our consideration to the purely artistic side of the
subject, it would be impossible to define a point that would separate
the artistic instinct from the love of the live things, and of nature in
general, for there is no such point. One merges naturally into the
other.
It is not necessary for a lover of nature to have an exact scientific
knowledge of all the things he sees in order to derive enjoyment from
them, but a trained observer is more sensitive to the poetic influences
of nature, has a wider range of vision, a greater capacity for
appreciation, and is more deeply responsive to the subtle harmonies than
one who is only susceptible to the more obvious aspects.
The love of the Little Things which are concealed from the ordinary eye
comes only to one who has sought out their hiding-places, and learned
their ways by tender and long association. Their world and ours is
fundamentally the same, and to know them is to know ourselves.
We sometimes cannot tell whether the clear, flutelike note from the
depths of the ravine comes from the thrush or the oriole, but we know
that the little song has carried us just a little nearer to nature’s
heart than we were before. If we could see the singer and learn his
name, his silvery tones would be still more pure and sweet when he comes
again.
The spring songs in the dune country seem to exalt and sanctify the
forest aisles, and to weave a spell out over the open spaces. The still
sands seem to awaken under the vibrant melodies of the choirs among the
trees. These sanctuaries are not for those who would “shower shot into a
singing tree,” but for him who comes to listen and to worship.
The voices of the dunes are in many keys. The cries of the gulls and
crows--the melodies of the songsters--the wind tones among the
trees--the roar of the surf on the shore--the soft rustling of the loose
sands, eddying among the beach grasses--the whirr of startled wings in
the ravines--the piping of the frogs and little toads in the marshy
spots--the chorus of the katydids and locusts--the prolonged notes of
the owls at night--and many other sounds, all blend into the greater
song of the hills, and become a part of the appeal to our higher
emotions, in this land of enchantment and mystery.
[Illustration] CHAPTER III
THE TURTLES
Sometimes we find interesting little comedies mapped on the sands.
One morning the July sun had come from behind the clouds, after a heavy
rain, and quickly dried the surface, leaving the firm, wet sand
underneath. On the dunes, walks are particularly delightful when the
moist, packed sand becomes a yellow floor, but it requires much
endurance and enthusiasm to trudge through miles of soft sand on a hot
day and retain a contemplative mood.
We suddenly came upon some turtle tracks, beginning abruptly out on an
open space, indicating that the traveler had probably withdrawn into the
privacy and shelter of his mobile castle, and resumed his journey when
the sun appeared. All traces of his arrival at the point where the
tracks began had been obliterated by the rain.
We were curious to ascertain his objective, and as the trail was in
perfect condition, we followed it carefully for several hundred yards,
when we found another trail interrupting it obliquely from another
direction. Within an area of perhaps twenty feet in diameter the tracks
had left a confused network on the smooth sand. Evidently there had been
much discussion and consideration before a final decision had been
reached. Then the trails started off in the same direction, side by
side, varying from a foot to two feet or so apart.
There was much mystery in all this. Our curiosity continued, and about
half a mile farther on the smaller trail of the last comer suddenly
veered off toward the lake and disappeared in the wet sand of the
beach. The original trail finally ended several hundred yards farther on
in a clear stream, and there we saw Mr. Hardfinish resting quietly on
the shallow bottom, with the cool current flowing over him.
We may have stumbled on a turtle romance. Perhaps a tryst had been kept,
and after much argument and persuasion the two had decided to combine
their destinies. It may have been incompatibility of temperament, or
affection grown cold, which caused the later estrangement. A fickle
heart may have throbbed under the shell of the faithless amphibian who
had joined the expedition, but whatever the cause of the separation was,
the initiator of the journey had been left to finish it alone. His trail
showed no wavering at the point of desertion, and evidently the rhythm
of his march was not disturbed by it.
There is much food for reflection in this story on the sand. What we
call human nature is very largely the nature of all animal life, and
community of interest governs all association. When it ceases to exist,
the quadruped or biped invariably seeks isolation. Selfishness is soul
solitude.
In the case of the turtles the highly civilized divorce courts were not
necessary. They simply quit.
The record of the little romance was written upon a frail page, which
the next wind or shower obliterated as completely as time effaces most
of the stories of human lives.
The turtles are persistent wanderers. Their trails are found all through
the dune country, and usually a definite objective seems to be
indicated. A trail will begin at the margin of a small pond back of the
hills, and follow practically a direct route for a long distance to
another pond, often over a mile away. Sometimes high eminences
intervene, which are patiently climbed over without material alteration
in the course which the mysterious compass under the brown shell has
laid before it.
The deserted habitat may have been invaded by unwelcome new arrivals and
rendered socially unattractive. Domestic complications may have inspired
the pilgrimage, the voyager may have decided that he was unappreciated
in the community in which he lived, or he may have been excommunicated
for unbelief in established turtle dogmas.
The common variegated pond turtle, which is the variety most often found
among the dunes, is a beautiful harmless creature, but his wicked
cousin, the snapping turtle, is an ugly customer. He leads a life of
debased villainy, and no justification for his existence has yet been
discovered. He is a rank outlaw, and the enemy of everything within his
radius of destruction. His crimes are legion, and like the sand-burr, he
seems to be one of nature’s inadvertencies. The mother ducks, the frog
folk, and all the small life in the sloughs dread his sinister bulk and
relentless jaws.
He is a voracious brute, and feeds upon all kinds of animal fare. He
often attains a weight of about forty pounds, and the rough moss covered
shell of a full grown specimen is sometimes fourteen inches long. One of
the peculiarities of this repulsive wretch is that he strikes at his
victims much in the same manner as a rattlesnake, and with
lightning-like rapidity.
Possibly he was sent into the world to assist in enabling us to
accentuate our blessings by contrast--as some people we occasionally
meet undoubtedly were--and it is best to let him absolutely alone. He is
an evil and unclean thing and we will pass him by. Like the skunk, he
does not invite companionship, and has no social charms whatever.
It was not he who helped to play the little comedy on the sand.
[Illustration: SOCIALLY UNATTRACTIVE]
[Illustration:
“STEADILY WINGING THEIR WAY
TO THE CHOSEN SPOT”]