Or in this:—

“‘Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain tops with sovran eye.’

There is savage, perennial beauty there, the quality that Wordsworth

and nearly all the modern poets lack.”

“But Wordsworth is the poet of the mountains,” said I, “and of lonely

peaks. True, he does not express the power and aboriginal grace there

is in them, nor toy with them and pluck them up by the hair of their

heads, as Shakespeare does. There is something in Peakamoose yonder, as

we see it from this point, cutting the blue vault with its dark,

serrated edge, not in the bard of Grasmere; but he expresses the

feeling of loneliness and insignificance that the cultivated man has in

the presence of mountains, and the burden of solemn emotion they give

rise to. Then there is something much more wild and merciless, much

more remote from human interests and ends, in our long, high, wooded

ranges than is expressed by the peaks and scarred groups of the lake

country of Britain. These mountains we behold and cross are not

picturesque,—they are wild and inhuman as the sea. In them you are in a

maze, in a weltering world of woods; you can see neither the earth nor

the sky, but a confusion of the growth and decay of centuries, and must

traverse them by your compass or your science of woodcraft,—a rift

through the trees giving one a glimpse of the opposite range or of the

valley beneath, and he is more at sea than ever; one does not know his

own farm or settlement when framed in these mountain treetops; all look

alike unfamiliar.”

Not the least of the charm of camping out is your camp-fire at night.

What an artist! What pictures are boldly thrown or faintly outlined

upon the canvas of the night! Every object, every attitude of your

companion is striking and memorable. You see effects and groups every

moment that you would give money to be able to carry away with you in

enduring form. How the shadows leap, and skulk, and hover about! Light

and darkness are in perpetual tilt and warfare, with first the one

unhorsed, then the other. The friendly and cheering fire, what

acquaintance we make with it! We had almost forgotten there was such an

element, we had so long known only its dark offspring, heat. Now we see

the wild beauty uncaged and note its manner and temper. How surely it

creates its own draught and sets the currents going, as force and

enthusiasm always will! It carves itself a chimney out of the fluid and

houseless air. A friend, a ministering angel, in subjection; a fiend, a

fury, a monster, ready to devour the world, if ungoverned. By day it

burrows in the ashes and sleeps; at night it comes forth and sits upon

its throne of rude logs, and rules the camp, a sovereign queen.

Near camp stood a tall, ragged yellow birch, its partially cast-off

bark hanging in crisp sheets or dense rolls.

“That tree needs the barber,” we said, “and shall have a call from him

to-night.”

So after dark I touched a match into it, and we saw the flames creep up

and wax in fury until the whole tree and its main branches stood

wrapped in a sheet of roaring flame. It was a wild and striking

spectacle, and must have advertised our camp to every nocturnal

creature in the forest.

What does the camper think about when lounging around the fire at

night? Not much,—of the sport of the day, of the big fish he lost and

might have saved, of the distant settlement, of to-morrow’s plans. An

owl hoots off in the mountain and he thinks of him; if a wolf were to

howl or a panther to scream, he would think of him the rest of the

night. As it is, things flicker and hover through his mind, and he

hardly knows whether it is the past or the present that possesses him.

Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the great forest, and,

whether he will or not, all his musings are in some way cast upon that

huge background of the night. Unless he is an old camper-out, there

will be an undercurrent of dread or half fear. My companion said he

could not help but feel all the time that there ought to be a sentinel

out there pacing up and down. One seems to require less sleep in the

woods, as if the ground and the untempered air rested and refreshed him

sooner. The balsam and the hemlock heal his aches very quickly. If one

is awakened often during the night, as he invariably is, he does not

feel that sediment of sleep in his mind next day that he does when the

same interruption occurs at home; the boughs have drawn it all out of

him.

And it is wonderful how rarely any of the housed and tender white man’s

colds or influenzas come through these open doors and windows of the

woods. It is our partial isolation from Nature that is dangerous; throw

yourself unreservedly upon her and she rarely betrays you.

If one takes anything to the woods to read, he seldom reads it; it does

not taste good with such primitive air.

There are very few camp poems that I know of, poems that would be at

home with one on such an expedition; there is plenty that is weird and

spectral, as in Poe, but little that is woody and wild as this scene

is. I recall a Canadian poem by the late C. D. Shanly—the only one, I

believe, the author ever wrote—that fits well the distended pupil of

the mind’s eye about the camp-fire at night. It was printed many years

ago in the “Atlantic Monthly,” and is called “The Walker of the Snow;”

it begins thus:—

“‘Speed on, speed on, good master;

The camp lies far away;

We must cross the haunted valley

Before the close of day.’”

“That has a Canadian sound,” said Aaron; “give us more of it.”

“‘How the snow-blight came upon me

I will tell you as we go,—

The blight of the shadow hunter

Who walks the midnight snow.’

And so on. The intent seems to be to personify the fearful cold that

overtakes and benumbs the traveler in the great Canadian forests in

winter. This stanza brings out the silence or desolation of the scene

very effectively,—a scene without sound or motion:—

“‘Save the wailing of the moose-bird

With a plaintive note and low;

And the skating of the red leaf

Upon the frozen snow.’

“The rest of the poem runs thus:—

“‘And said I, Though dark is falling,

And far the camp must be,

Yet my heart it would be lightsome

If I had but company.

“‘And then I sang and shouted,

Keeping measure as I sped,

To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe

As it sprang beneath my tread.

“‘Nor far into the valley

Had I dipped upon my way,

When a dusky figure joined me

In a capuchin of gray,

“‘Bending upon the snow-shoes

With a long and limber stride;

And I hailed the dusky stranger,

As we traveled side by side.

“‘But no token of communion

Gave he by word or look,

And the fear-chill fell upon me

At the crossing of the brook.

“‘For I saw by the sickly moonlight,

As I followed, bending low,

That the walking of the stranger

Left no foot-marks on the snow.

“‘Then the fear-chill gathered o’er me,

Like a shroud around me cast,

As I sank upon the snow-drift

Where the shadow hunter passed.

“‘And the otter-trappers found me,

Before the break of day,

With my dark hair blanched and whitened

As the snow in which I lay.

“‘But they spoke not as they raised me;

For they knew that in the night

I had seen the shadow hunter

And had withered in his sight.

“‘Sancta Maria speed us!

The sun is fallen low:

Before us lies the valley

Of the Walker of the Snow!’”

“Ah!” exclaimed my companion. “Let us pile on more of those dry

birch-logs; I feel both the ‘fear-chill’ and the ‘cold-chill’ creeping

over me. How far is it to the valley of the Neversink?”

“About three or four hours’ march, the man said.”

“I hope we have no haunted valleys to cross?”

“None,” said I, “but we pass an old log cabin about which there hangs a

ghostly superstition. At a certain hour in the night, during the time

the bark is loose on the hemlock, a female form is said to steal from

it and grope its way into the wilderness. The tradition runs that her

lover, who was a bark-peeler and wielded the spud, was killed by his

rival, who felled a tree upon him while they were at work. The girl,

who helped her mother cook for the ‘hands,’ was crazed by the shock,

and that night stole forth into the woods and was never seen or heard

of more. There are old hunters who aver that her cry may still be heard

at night at the head of the valley whenever a tree falls in the

stillness of the forest.”

“Well, I heard a tree fall not ten minutes ago,” said Aaron; “a

distant, rushing sound with a subdued crash at the end of it, and the

only answering cry I heard was the shrill voice of the screech owl off

yonder against the mountain. But maybe it was not an owl,” said he

after a moment; “let us help the legend along by believing it was the

voice of the lost maiden.”

“By the way,” continued he, “do you remember the pretty creature we saw

seven years ago in the shanty on the West Branch, who was really

helping her mother cook for the hands, a slip of a girl twelve or

thirteen years old, with eyes as beautiful and bewitching as the waters

that flowed by her cabin? I was wrapped in admiration till she spoke;

then how the spell was broken! Such a voice! It was like the sound of

pots and pans when you expected to hear a lute.”

The next day we bade farewell to the Rondout, and set out to cross the

mountain to the east branch of the Neversink.

“We shall find tame waters compared with these, I fear,—a shriveled

stream brawling along over loose stones, with few pools or deep

places.”

Our course was along the trail of the bark-men who had pursued the

doomed hemlock to the last tree at the head of the valley. As we passed

along, a red steer stepped out of the bushes into the road ahead of us,

where the sunshine fell full upon him, and, with a half-scared,

beautiful look, begged alms of salt. We passed the Haunted Shanty; but

both it and the legend about it looked very tame at ten o’clock in the

morning. After the road had faded out, we took to the bed of the stream

to avoid the gauntlet of the underbrush, skipping up the mountain from

boulder to boulder. Up and up we went, with frequent pauses and copious

quaffing of the cold water. My soldier declared a “haunted valley”

would be a godsend; anything but endless dragging of one’s self up such

an Alpine stairway. The winter wren, common all through the woods,

peeped and scolded at us as we sat blowing near the summit, and the

oven-bird, not quite sure as to what manner of creatures we were,

hopped down a limb to within a few feet of us and had a good look, then

darted off into the woods to tell the news. I also noted the Canada

warbler, the chestnut-sided warbler, and the black-throated

blue-back,—the latter most abundant of all. Up these mountain brooks,

too, goes the belted kingfisher, swooping around through the woods when

he spies the fisherman, then wheeling into the open space of the stream

and literally making a “blue streak” down under the branches.

At last the stream which had been our guide was lost under the rocks,

and before long the top was gained. These mountains are horse-shaped.

There is always a broad, smooth back, more or less depressed, which the

hunter aims to bestride; rising rapidly from this is pretty sure to be

a rough, curving ridge that carries the forest up to some highest peak.

We were lucky in hitting the saddle, but we could see a little to the

south the sharp, steep neck of the steed sweeping up toward the sky

with an erect mane of balsam fir.

These mountains are steed-like in other respects: any timid and

vacillating course with them is sure to get you into trouble. One must

strike out boldly, and not be disturbed by the curveting and shying;

the valley you want lies squarely behind them, but farther off than you

think, and if you do not go for it resolutely, you will get bewildered

and the mountain will play you a trick.

I may say that Aaron and I kept a tight rein and a good pace till we

struck a water-course on the other side, and that we clattered down it

with no want of decision till it emptied into a larger stream which we

knew must be the East Branch. An abandoned fishpole lay on the stones,

marking the farthest point reached by some fisherman. According to our

reckoning, we were five or six miles above the settlement, with a good

depth of primitive woods all about us.

We kept on down the stream, now and then pausing at a likely place to

take some trout for dinner, and with an eye out for a good

camping-ground. Many of the trout were full of ripe spawn, and a few

had spawned, the season with them being a little later than on the

stream we had left, perhaps because the water was less cold. Neither

had the creek here any such eventful and startling career. It led,

indeed, quite a humdrum sort of life under the roots and fallen

treetops and among the loose stones. At rare intervals it beamed upon

us from some still reach or dark cover, and won from us our best

attention in return.

The day was quite spent before we had pitched our air-woven tent and

prepared our dinner, and we gathered boughs for our bed in the

gloaming. Breakfast had to be caught in the morning and was not served

early, so that it was nine o’clock before we were in motion. A little

bird, the red-eyed vireo, warbled most cheerily in the trees above our

camp, and, as Aaron said, “gave us a good send-off.” We kept down the

stream, following the inevitable bark road.

My companion had refused to look at another “dividing ridge” that had

neither path nor way, and henceforth I must keep to the open road or

travel alone. Two hours’ tramp brought us to an old clearing with some

rude, tumble-down log buildings that many years before had been

occupied by the bark and lumber men. The prospect for trout was so good

in the stream hereabouts, and the scene so peaceful and inviting, shone

upon by the dreamy August sun, that we concluded to tarry here until

the next day. It was a page of pioneer history opened to quite

unexpectedly. A dim footpath led us a few yards to a superb spring, in

which a trout from the near creek had taken up his abode. We took

possession of what had been a shingle-shop, attracted by its huge

fireplace. We floored it with balsam boughs, hung its walls with our

“traps,” and sent the smoke curling again from its disused chimney.

The most musical and startling sound we heard in the woods greeted our

ears that evening about sundown as we sat on a log in front of our

quarters,—the sound of slow, measured pounding in the valley below us.

We did not know how near we were to human habitations, and the report

of the lumberman’s mallet, like the hammering of a great woodpecker,

was music to the ear and news to the mind. The air was still and dense,

and the silence such as alone broods over these little openings in the

primitive woods. My soldier started as if he had heard a signal-gun.

The sound, coming so far through the forest, sweeping over those great

wind-harps of trees, became wild and legendary, though probably made by

a lumberman driving a wedge or working about his mill.

We expected a friendly visit from porcupines that night, as we saw

where they had freshly gnawed all about us; hence, when a red squirrel

came and looked in upon us very early in the morning and awoke us by

his snickering and giggling, my comrade cried out, “There is your

porcupig.” How the frisking red rogue seemed to enjoy what he had

found! He looked in at the door and snickered, then in at the window,

then peeked down from between the rafters and cachinnated till his

sides must have ached; then struck an attitude upon the chimney, and

fairly squealed with mirth and ridicule. In fact, he grew so

obstreperous, and so disturbed our repose, that we had to “shoo” him

away with one of our boots. He declared most plainly that he had never

before seen so preposterous a figure as we cut lying there in the

corner of that old shanty.

The morning boded rain, the week to which we had limited ourselves drew

near its close, and we concluded to finish our holiday worthily by a

good square tramp to the railroad station, twenty-three miles distant,

as it proved. Two miles brought us to stumpy fields, and to the house

of the upper inhabitant. They told us there was a short cut across the

mountain, but my soldier shook his head.

“Better twenty miles of Europe,” said he, getting Tennyson a little

mixed, “than one of Cathay, or Slide Mountain either.”

Drops of the much-needed rain began to come down, and I hesitated in

front of the woodshed.

“Sprinkling weather always comes to some bad end,” said Aaron, with a

reminiscence of an old couplet in his mind, and so it proved, for it

did not get beyond a sprinkle, and the sun shone out before noon.

In the next woods I picked up from the middle of the road the tail and

one hind leg of one of our native rats, the first I had ever seen

except in a museum. An owl or fox had doubtless left it the night

before. It was evident the fragments had once formed part of a very

elegant and slender creature. The fur that remained (for it was not

hair) was tipped with red. My reader doubtless knows that the common

rat is an importation, and that there is a native American rat, usually

found much farther south than the locality of which I am writing, that

lives in the woods,—a sylvan rat, very wild and nocturnal in his

habits, and seldom seen even by hunters or woodmen. Its eyes are large

and fine, and its form slender. It looks like only a far-off

undegenerate cousin of the filthy creature that has come to us from the

long-peopled Old World. Some creature ran between my feet and the fire

toward morning, the last night we slept in the woods, and I have little

doubt it was one of these wood-rats.

The people in these back settlements are almost as shy and furtive as

the animals. Even the men look a little scared when you stop them by

your questions. The children dart behind their parents when you look at

them. As we sat on a bridge resting,—for our packs still weighed

fifteen or twenty pounds each,—two women passed us with pails on their

arms, going for blackberries. They filed by with their eyes down like

two abashed nuns.

In due time we found an old road, to which we had been directed, that

led over the mountain to the West Branch. It was a hard pull, sweetened

by blackberries and a fine prospect. The snowbird was common along the

way, and a solitary wild pigeon shot through the woods in front of us,

recalling the nests we had seen on the East Branch,—little scaffoldings

of twigs scattered all through the trees.

It was nearly noon when we struck the West Branch, and the sun was

scalding hot. We knew that two and three pound trout had been taken

there, and yet we wet not a line in its waters. The scene was

primitive, and carried one back to the days of his grandfather, stumpy

fields, log fences, log houses and barns. A boy twelve or thirteen

years old came out of a house ahead of us eating a piece of bread and

butter. We soon overtook him and held converse with him. He knew the

land well, and what there was in the woods and the waters. He had

walked out to the railroad station, fourteen miles distant, to see the

cars, and back the same day. I asked him about the flies and

mosquitoes, etc. He said they were all gone except the “blunder-heads;”

there were some of them left yet.

“What are blunder-heads?” I inquired, sniffing new game.

“The pesky little fly that gets into your eye when you are a-fishing.”

Ah, yes! I knew him well. We had got acquainted some days before, and I

thanked the boy for the name. It is an insect that hovers before your

eye as you thread the streams, and you are forever vaguely brushing at

it under the delusion that it is a little spider suspended from your

hat-brim; and just as you want to see clearest, into your eye it goes,

head and ears, and is caught between the lids. You miss your cast, but

you catch a “blunder-head.”

We paused under a bridge at the mouth of Biscuit Brook and ate our

lunch, and I can recommend it to be as good a wayside inn as the

pedestrian need look for. Better bread and milk than we had there I

never expect to find. The milk was indeed so good that Aaron went down

to the little log house under the hill a mile farther on and asked for

more; and being told they had no cow, he lingered five minutes on the

doorstone with his sooty pail in his hand, putting idle questions about

the way and distance to the mother while he refreshed himself with the

sight of a well-dressed and comely-looking young girl, her daughter.

“I got no milk,” said he, hurrying on after me, “but I got something

better, only I cannot divide it.”

“I know what it is,” replied I; “I heard her voice.”

“Yes, and it was a good one, too. The sweetest sound I ever heard,” he

went on, “was a girl’s voice after I had been four years in the army,

and, by Jove! if I didn’t experience something of the same pleasure in

hearing this young girl speak after a week in the woods. She had

evidently been out in the world and was home on a visit. It was a

different look she gave me from that of the natives. This is better

than fishing for trout,” said he. “You drop in at the next house.”

But the next house looked too unpromising.

“There is no milk there,” said I, “unless they keep a goat.”

“But could we not,” said my facetious companion, “go it on that?”

A couple of miles beyond I stopped at a house that enjoyed the

distinction of being clapboarded, and had the good fortune to find both

the milk and the young lady. A mother and her daughter were again the

only occupants save a babe in the cradle, which the young woman quickly

took occasion to disclaim.

“It has not opened its dear eyes before since its mother left. Come to

aunty,” and she put out her hands.

The daughter filled my pail and the mother replenished our stock of

bread. They asked me to sit and cool myself, and seemed glad of a

stranger to talk with. They had come from an adjoining county five

years before, and had carved their little clearing out of the solid

woods.

“The men folks,” the mother said, “came on ahead and built the house

right among the big trees,” pointing to the stumps near the door.

One no sooner sets out with his pack upon his back to tramp through the

land than all objects and persons by the way have a new and curious

interest to him. The tone of his entire being is not a little elevated,

and all his perceptions and susceptibilities quickened. I feel that

some such statement is necessary to justify the interest that I felt in

this backwoods maiden. A slightly pale face it was, strong and well

arched, with a tender, wistful expression not easy to forget.

I had surely seen that face many times before in towns and cities, and

in other lands, but I hardly expected to meet it here amid the stumps.

What were the agencies that had given it its fine lines and its

gracious intelligence amid these simple, primitive scenes? What did my

heroine read, or think? or what were her unfulfilled destinies? She

wore a sprig of prince’s pine in her hair, which gave a touch

peculiarly welcome.

“Pretty lonely,” she said, in answer to my inquiry; “only an occasional

fisherman in summer, and in winter—nobody at all.”

And the little new schoolhouse in the woods farther on, with its

half-dozen scholars and the girlish face of the teacher seen through

the open door,—nothing less than the exhilaration of a journey on foot

could have made it seem the interesting object it was. Two of the

little girls had been to the spring after a pail of water, and came

struggling out of the woods into the road with it as we passed. They

set down their pail and regarded us with a half-curious, half-alarmed

look.

“What is your teacher’s name?” asked one of us.

“Miss Lucinde Josephine—” began the red-haired one, then hesitated,

bewildered, when the bright, dark-eyed one cut her short with “Miss

Simms,” and taking hold of the pail said, “Come on.”

“Are there any scholars from above here?” I inquired.

“Yes, Bobbie and Matie,” and they hastened toward the door.

We once more stopped under a bridge for refreshments, and took our

time, knowing the train would not go on without us. By four o’clock we

were across the mountain, having passed from the watershed of the

Delaware into that of the Hudson. The next eight miles we had a down

grade but a rough road, and during the last half of it we had blisters

on the bottoms of our feet. It is one of the rewards of the pedestrian

that, however tired he may be, he is always more or less refreshed by

his journey. His physical tenement has taken an airing. His respiration

has been deepened, his circulation quickened. A good draught has

carried off the fumes and the vapors. One’s quality is intensified; the

color strikes in. At noon that day I was much fatigued; at night I was

leg-weary and footsore, but a fresh, hardy feeling had taken possession

of me that lasted for weeks.

VIII

BIRDS’-NESTING

Birds’s-nesting is by no means a failure, even though you find no

birds’-nests. You are sure to find other things of interest, plenty of

them. A friend of mine says that, in his youth, he used to go hunting

with his gun loaded for wild turkeys, and, though he frequently saw

plenty of smaller game, he generally came home empty-handed, because he

was loaded only for turkeys. But the student of ornithology, who is

also a lover of Nature in all her shows and forms, does not go out

loaded for turkeys merely, but for everything that moves or grows, and

is quite sure, therefore, to bag some game, if not with his gun, then

with his eye, or his nose, or his ear. Even a crow’s nest is not amiss,

or a den in the rocks where the coons or the skunks live, or a log

where a partridge drums, or the partridge himself starting up with

spread tail, and walking a few yards in advance of you before he goes

humming through the woods, or a woodchuck hole, with well beaten and

worn entrance, and with the saplings gnawed and soiled about it, or the

strong, fetid smell of the fox, which a sharp nose detects here and

there, and which is a good perfume in the woods. And then it is enough

to come upon a spring in the woods and stoop down and drink of the

sweet, cold water, and bathe your hands in it, or to walk along a trout

brook, which has absorbed the shadows till it has itself become but a

denser shade. Then I am always drawn out of my way by a ledge of rocks,

and love nothing better than to explore the caverns and dens, or to sit

down under the overhanging crags and let the wild scene absorb me.

[Illustration: ledges]

There is a fascination about ledges! They are an unmistakable feature,

and give emphasis and character to the scene. I feel their spell, and

must pause awhile. Time, old as the hills and older, looks out of their

scarred and weather-worn face. The woods are of to-day, but the ledges,

in comparison, are of eternity. One pokes about them as he would about

ruins, and with something of the same feeling. They are ruins of the

fore world. Here the foundations of the hills were laid; here the

earth-giants wrought and builded. They constrain one to silence and

meditation; the whispering and rustling trees seem trivial and

impertinent.

And then there are birds’-nests about ledges, too, exquisite mossy

tenements, with white, pebbly eggs, that I can never gaze upon without

emotion. The little brown bird, the phœbe, looks at you from her niche

till you are within a few feet of her, when she darts away.

Occasionally you may find the nest of some rare wood-warbler forming a

little pocket in the apron of moss that hangs down over the damp rocks.

The sylvan folk seem to know when you are on a peaceful mission, and

are less afraid than usual. Did not that marmot to-day guess that my

errand did not concern him as he saw me approach from his cover in the

bushes? But when he saw me pause and deliberately seat myself on the

stone wall immediately over his hole, his confidence was much shaken.

He apparently deliberated awhile, for I heard the leaves rustle as if

he were making up his mind, when he suddenly broke cover and came for

his hole full tilt. Any other animal would have taken to his heels and

fled; but a woodchuck’s heels do not amount to much for speed, and he

feels his only safety is in his hole. On he came in the most obstinate

and determined manner, and I dare say if I had sat down in his hole,

would have attacked me unhesitatingly. This I did not give him a chance

to do; but, not to be entirely outdone, attempted to set my feet on him

in no very gentle manner; but he whipped into his den beneath me with a

defiant snort. Farther on, a saucy chipmunk presumed upon my harmless

character to an unwonted degree also. I had paused to bathe my hands

and face in a little trout brook, and had set a tin cup, which I had

partly filled with strawberries as I crossed the field, on a stone at

my feet, when along came the chipmunk as confidently as if he knew

precisely where he was going, and, perfectly oblivious of my presence,

cocked himself up on the rim of the cup and proceeded to eat my

choicest berries. I remained motionless and observed him. He had eaten

but two when the thought seemed to occur to him that he might be doing

better, and he began to fill his pockets. Two, four, six, eight of my

berries quickly disappeared, and the cheeks of the little vagabond

swelled. But all the time he kept eating, that not a moment might be

lost. Then he hopped off the cup, and went skipping from stone to stone

till the brook was passed, when he disappeared in the woods. In two or

three minutes he was back again, and went to stuffing himself as

before; then he disappeared a second time, and I imagined told a friend

of his, for in a moment or two along came a bobtailed chipmunk, as if

in search of something, and passed up, and down, and around, but did

not quite hit the spot. Shortly, the first returned a third time, and

had now grown a little fastidious, for he began to sort over my

berries, and to bite into them, as if to taste their quality. He was

not long in loading up, however, and in making off again. But I had now

got tired of the joke, and my berries were appreciably diminishing, so

I moved away. What was most curious about the proceeding was, that the

little poacher took different directions each time, and returned from

different ways. Was this to elude pursuit, or was he distributing the

fruit to his friends and neighbors about, astonishing them with

strawberries for lunch?

But I am making slow headway toward finding the birds’-nests, for I had

set out on this occasion in hopes of finding a rare nest,—the nest of

the black-throated blue-backed warbler, which, it seemed, with one or

two others, was still wanting to make the history of our warblers

complete. The woods were extensive, and full of deep, dark tangles, and

looking for any particular nest seemed about as hopeless a task as

searching for a needle in a haystack, as the old saying is. Where to

begin, and how? But the principle is the same as in looking for a hen’s

nest,—first find your bird, then watch its movements.

The bird is in these woods, for I have seen him scores of times, but

whether he builds high or low, on the ground or in the trees, is all

unknown to me. That is his song now,—“twe-twea-twe-e-e-a,” with a

peculiar summer languor and plaintiveness, and issuing from the lower

branches and growths. Presently we—for I have been joined by a

companion—discover the bird, a male, insecting in the top of a newly

fallen hemlock. The black, white, and blue of his uniform are seen at a

glance. His movements are quite slow compared with some of the

warblers. If he will only betray the locality of that little domicile

where his plainly clad mate is evidently sitting, it is all we will ask

of him. But this he seems in no wise disposed to do. Here and there,

and up and down; we follow him, often losing him, and as often

refinding him by his song; but the clew to his nest, how shall we get

it? Does he never go home to see how things are getting on, or to see

if his presence is not needed, or to take madam a morsel of food? No

doubt he keeps within earshot, and a cry of distress or alarm from the

mother bird would bring him to the spot in an instant. Would that some

evil fate would make her cry, then! Presently he encounters a rival.

His feeding-ground infringes upon that of another, and the two birds

regard each other threateningly. This is a good sign, for their nests

are evidently near.

Their battle-cry is a low, peculiar chirp, not very fierce, but

bantering and confident. They quickly come to blows, but it is a very

fantastic battle, and, as it would seem, indulged in more to satisfy

their sense of honor than to hurt each other, for neither party gets

the better of the other, and they separate a few paces and sing, and

squeak, and challenge each other in a very happy frame of mind. The

gauntlet is no sooner thrown down than it is again taken up by one or

the other, and in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes they have

three or four encounters, separating a little, then provoked to return

again like two cocks, till finally they withdraw beyond hearing of each

other,—both, no doubt, claiming the victory. But the secret of the nest

is still kept. Once I think I have it. I catch a glimpse of a bird

which looks like the female, and near by, in a small hemlock about

eight feet from the ground, my eye detects a nest. But as I come up

under it, I can see daylight through it, and that it is

empty,—evidently only part finished, not lined or padded yet. Now if

the bird will only return and claim it, the point will be gained. But

we wait and watch in vain. The architect has knocked off to-day, and we

must come again, or continue our search.

While loitering about here we were much amused by three chipmunks, who

seemed to be engaged in some kind of game. It looked very much as if

they were playing tag. Round and round they would go, first one taking

the lead, then another, all good-natured and gleeful as schoolboys.

There is one thing about a chipmunk that is peculiar: he is never more

than one jump from home. Make a dive at him anywhere and in he goes. He

knows where the hole is, even when it is covered up with leaves. There

is no doubt, also, that he has his own sense of humor and fun, as what

squirrel has not? I have watched two red squirrels for a half hour

coursing through the large trees by the roadside where branches

interlocked, and engaged in a game of tag as obviously as two boys. As

soon as the pursuer had come up with the pursued, and actually touched

him, the palm was his, and away he would go, taxing his wits and his

speed to the utmost to elude his fellow.

Despairing of finding either of the nests of the two males, we pushed

on through the woods to try our luck elsewhere. Before long, just as we

were about to plunge down a hill into a dense, swampy part of the

woods, we discovered a pair of the birds we were in quest of. They had

food in their beaks, and, as we paused, showed great signs of alarm,

indicating that the nest was in the immediate vicinity. This was

enough. We would pause here and find this nest, anyhow. To make a sure

thing of it, we determined to watch the parent birds till we had wrung

from them their secret. So we doggedly crouched down and watched them,

and they watched us. It was diamond cut diamond. But as we felt

constrained in our movements, desiring, if possible, to keep so quiet

that the birds would, after a while, see in us only two harmless stumps

or prostrate logs, we had much the worst of it. The mosquitoes were

quite taken with our quiet, and knew us from logs and stumps in a

moment. Neither were the birds deceived, not even when we tried the

Indian’s tactics, and plumed ourselves with green branches. Ah, the

suspicious creatures, how they watched us with the food in their beaks,

abstaining for one whole hour from ministering that precious charge

which otherwise would have been visited every moment! Quite near us

they would come at times, between us and the nest, eying us so sharply.

Then they would move off, and apparently try to forget our presence.

Was it to deceive us, or to persuade himself and mate that there was no

serious cause for alarm, that the male would now and then strike up in

full song and move off to some distance through the trees? But the

mother bird did not allow herself to lose sight of us at all, and both

birds, after carrying the food in their beaks a long time, would

swallow it themselves. Then they would obtain another morsel and

apparently approach very near the nest, when their caution or prudence

would come to their aid, and they would swallow the food and hasten

away. I thought the young birds would cry out, but not a syllable from

them. Yet this was, no doubt, what kept the parent birds away from the

nest. The clamor the young would have set up on the approach of the old

with food would have exposed everything.

After a time I felt sure I knew within a few feet where the nest was

concealed. Indeed, I thought I knew the identical bush. Then the birds

approached each other again and grew very confidential about another

locality some rods below. This puzzled us, and, seeing the whole

afternoon might be spent in this manner, and the mystery unsolved, we

determined to change our tactics and institute a thorough search of the

locality. This procedure soon brought things to a crisis, for, as my

companion clambered over a log by a little hemlock, a few yards from

where we had been sitting, with a cry of alarm out sprang the young

birds from their nest in the hemlock, and, scampering and fluttering

over the leaves, disappeared in different directions. This brought the

parent birds on the scene in an agony of alarm. Their distress was

pitiful. They threw themselves on the ground at our very feet, and

fluttered, and cried, and trailed themselves before us, to draw us away

from the place, or distract our attention from the helpless young. I

shall not forget the male bird, how bright he looked, how sharp the

contrast as he trailed his painted plumage there on the dry leaves.

Apparently he was seriously disabled. He would start up as if exerting

every muscle to fly away, but no use; down he would come, with a

helpless, fluttering motion, before he had gone two yards, and

apparently you had only to go and pick him up. But before you could

pick him up, he had recovered somewhat and flown a little farther; and

thus, if you were tempted to follow him, you would soon find yourself

some distance from the scene of the nest, and both old and young well

out of your reach. The female bird was not less solicious, and

practiced the same arts upon us to decoy us away, but her dull plumage

rendered her less noticeable. The male was clad in holiday attire, but

his mate in an every-day working-garb.

The nest was built in the fork of a little hemlock, about fifteen

inches from the ground, and was a thick, firm structure, composed of

the finer material of the woods, with a lining of very delicate roots

or rootlets. There were four young birds and one addled egg. We found

it in a locality about the head-waters of the eastern branch of the

Delaware, where several other of the rarer species of warblers, such as

the mourning ground, the Blackburnian, the chestnut-sided, and the

speckled Canada, spend the summer and rear their young.

Defunct birds’-nests are easy to find; when the leaves fall, then they

are in every bush and tree; and one wonders how he missed them; but a

live nest, how it eludes one! I have read of a noted criminal who could

hide himself pretty effectually in any room that contained the usual

furniture; he would embrace the support of a table so as to seem part

of it. The bird has studied the same art: it always blends its nest

with the surroundings, and sometimes its very openness hides it; the

light itself seems to conceal it. Then the birds build anew each year,

and so always avail themselves of the present and latest combination of

leaves and screens, of light and shade. What was very well concealed

one season may be quite exposed the next.

Going a-fishing or a-berrying is a good introduction to the haunts of

the birds, and to their nesting-places. You put forth your hand for the

berries, and there is a nest; or your tread by the creeks starts the

sandpiper or the water-thrush from the ground where its eggs are

concealed, or some shy wood-warbler from a bush. One day, fishing down

a deep wooded gorge, my hook caught on a limb overhead, and on pulling

it down I found I had missed my trout, but had caught a hummingbird’s

nest. It was saddled on the limb as nicely as if it had been a grown

part of it.

Other collectors beside the oölogists are looking for birds’-nests,—

the squirrels and owls and jays and crows. The worst depredator in this

direction I know of is the fish crow, and I warn him to keep off my

premises, and charge every gunner to spare him not. He is a small

sneak-thief, and will rob the nest of every robin, wood thrush, and

oriole he can come at. I believe he fishes only when he is unable to

find birds’ eggs or young birds. The genuine crow, the crow with the

honest “caw,” “caw,” I have never caught in such small business, though

the kingbird makes no discrimination between them, but accuses both

alike.

IX

THE HALCYON IN CANADA

The halcyon or kingfisher is a good guide when you go to the woods. He

will not insure smooth water or fair weather, but he knows every stream

and lake like a book, and will take you to the wildest and most

unfrequented places. Follow his rattle and you shall see the source of

every trout and salmon stream on the continent. You shall see the Lake

of the Woods, and far-off Athabasca and Abbitibbe, and the unknown

streams that flow into Hudson’s Bay, and many others. His time is the

time of the trout, too, namely, from April to September. He makes his

subterranean nest in the bank of some favorite stream, and then goes on

long excursions up and down and over woods and mountains to all the

waters within reach, always fishing alone, the true angler that he is,

his fellow keeping far ahead or behind, or taking the other branch. He

loves the sound of a waterfall, and will sit a long time on a dry limb

overhanging the pool below it, and, forgetting his occupation, brood

upon his own memories and fancies.

[Illustration: belted kingfisher]

The past season my friend and I took a hint from him, and, when the

dog-star began to blaze, set out for Canada, making a big detour to

touch at salt water and to take New York and Boston on our way.

The latter city was new to me, and we paused there and angled a couple

of days and caught an editor, a philosopher, and a poet, and might have

caught more if we had had a mind to, for these waters are full of ’em,

and big ones, too.

Coming from the mountainous regions of the Hudson, we saw little in the

way of scenery that arrested our attention until we beheld the St.

Lawrence, though one gets glimpses now and then, as he is whirled along

through New Hampshire and Vermont, that make him wish for a fuller

view. It is always a pleasure to bring to pass the geography of one’s

boyhood; ’tis like the fulfilling of a dream; hence it was with partial

eyes that I looked upon the Merrimac, the Connecticut, and the

Passumpsic,—dusky, squaw-colored streams, whose names I had learned so

long ago. The traveler opens his eyes a little wider when he reaches

Lake Memphremagog, especially if he have the luck to see it under such

a sunset as we did, its burnished surface glowing like molten gold.

This lake is an immense trough that accommodates both sides of the

fence, though by far the larger and longer part of it is in Canada. Its

western shore is bold and picturesque, being skirted by a detachment of

the Green Mountains, the main range of which is seen careering along

the horizon far to the southwest; to the east and north, whither the

railroad takes you, the country is flat and monotonous.

The first peculiarity one notices about the farms in this northern

country is the close proximity of the house and barn, in most cases the

two buildings touching at some point,—an arrangement doubtless prompted

by the deep snows and severe cold of this latitude. The typical

Canadian dwelling-house is also presently met with on entering the

Dominion,—a low, modest structure of hewn spruce logs, with a steep

roof (containing two or more dormer windows) that ends in a smart

curve, a hint taken from the Chinese pagoda. Even in the more costly

brick or stone houses in the towns and vicinity this style is adhered

to. It is so universal that one wonders if the reason of it is not in

the climate also, the outward curve of the roof shooting the sliding

snow farther away from the dwelling. It affords a wide projection, in

many cases covering a veranda, and in all cases protecting the doors

and windows without interfering with the light. In the better class of

clapboarded houses the finish beneath the projecting eaves is also a

sweeping curve, opposing and bracing that of the roof. A two-story

country house, or a Mansard roof, I do not remember to have seen in

Canada; but in places they have become so enamored of the white of the

snow that they even whitewash the roofs of their buildings, giving a

cluster of them the impression, at a distance, of an encampment of

great tents.

As we neared Point Levi, opposite Quebec, we got our first view of the

St. Lawrence. “Iliad of rivers!” exclaimed my friend. “Yet unsung!” The

Hudson must take a back seat now, and a good way back. One of the two

or three great watercourses of the globe is before you. No other river,

I imagine, carries such a volume of pure cold water to the sea. Nearly

all its feeders are trout and salmon streams, and what an airing and

what a bleaching it gets on its course! Its history, its antecedents,

are unparalleled. The great lakes are its camping-grounds; here its

hosts repose under the sun and stars in areas like that of states and

kingdoms, and it is its waters that shake the earth at Niagara. Where

it receives the Saguenay it is twenty miles wide, and when it debouches

into the Gulf it is a hundred. Indeed, it is a chain of Homeric

sublimities from beginning to end. The great cataract is a fit sequel

to the great lakes; the spirit that is born in vast and tempestuous

Superior takes its full glut of power in that fearful chasm. If

paradise is hinted in the Thousand Islands, hell is unveiled in that

pit of terrors.

Its last escapade is the great rapids above Montreal, down which the

steamer shoots with its breathless passengers, after which, inhaling

and exhaling its mighty tides, it flows calmly to the sea.

The St. Lawrence is the type of nearly all the Canadian rivers, which

are strung with lakes and rapids and cataracts, and are full of peril

and adventure.

Here we reach the oldest part of the continent, geologists tell us; and

here we encounter a fragment of the Old World civilization. Quebec

presents the anomaly of a mediæval European city in the midst of the

American landscape. This air, this sky, these clouds, these trees, the

look of these fields, are what we have always known; but the houses,

and streets, and vehicles, and language, and physiognomy are strange.

As I walked upon the grand terrace I saw the robin and kingbird and

song sparrow, and there in the tree, by the Wolfe Monument, our summer

warbler was at home. I presently saw, also, that our republican crow

was a British subject, and that he behaved here more like his European

brother than he does in the States, being less wild and suspicious. On

the Plains of Abraham excellent timothy grass was growing and cattle

were grazing. We found a path through the meadow, and, with the

exception of a very abundant weed with a blue flower, saw nothing new

or strange,—nothing but the steep tin roofs of the city and its

frowning wall and citadel. Sweeping around the far southern horizon, we

could catch glimpses of mountains that were evidently in Maine or New

Hampshire; while twelve or fifteen miles to the north the Laurentian

ranges, dark and formidable, arrested the eye. Quebec, or the walled

part of it, is situated on a point of land shaped not unlike the human

foot, looking northeast, the higher and bolder side being next the

river, with the main part of the town on the northern slope toward the

St. Charles. Its toes are well down in the mud where this stream joins

the St. Lawrence, while the citadel is high on the instep and commands

the whole field. The grand Battery is a little below, on the brink of

the instep, so to speak, and the promenader looks down several hundred

feet into the tops of the chimneys of this part of the lower town, and

upon the great river sweeping by northeastward like another Amazon. The

heel of our misshapen foot extends indefinitely toward Montreal. Upon

it, on a level with the citadel, are the Plains of Abraham. It was up

its high, almost perpendicular, sides that Wolfe clambered with his

army, and stood in the rear of his enemy one pleasant September morning

over a hundred years ago.

To the north and northeast of Quebec, and in full view from the upper

parts of the city, lies a rich belt of agricultural country, sloping

gently toward the river, and running parallel with it for many miles,

called the Beauport slopes. The division of the land into uniform

parallelograms, as in France, was a marked feature, and is so

throughout the Dominion. A road ran through the midst of it lined with;

trees, and leading to the falls of the Montmorenci. I imagine that this

section is the garden of Quebec. Beyond it rose the mountains. Our eyes

looked wistfully toward them, for we had decided to penetrate the

Canadian woods in that direction.

One hundred and twenty-five miles from Quebec as the loon flies, almost

due north over unbroken spruce forests, lies Lake St. John, the cradle

of the terrible Saguenay. On the map it looks like a great cuttlefish

with its numerous arms and tentacula reaching out in all directions

into the wilds. It is a large oval body of water thirty miles in its

greatest diameter. The season here, owing to a sharp northern sweep of

the isothermal lines, is two or three weeks earlier than at Quebec. The

soil is warm and fertile, and there is a thrifty growing settlement

here with valuable agricultural produce, but no market nearer than

Quebec, two hundred and fifty miles distant by water, with a hard,

tedious land journey besides. In winter the settlement can have little

or no communication with the outside world.

To relieve this isolated colony and encourage further development of

the St. John region, the Canadian government is building [footnote:

Written in 1877] a wagon-road through the wilderness from Quebec

directly to the lake, thus economizing half the distance, as the road

when completed will form with the old route, the Saguenay and St.

Lawrence, one side of an equilateral triangle. A railroad was projected

a few years ago over nearly the same ground, and the contract to build

it given to an enterprising Yankee, who pocketed a part of the money

and has never been heard of since. The road runs for one hundred miles

through an unbroken wilderness, and opens up scores of streams and

lakes abounding with trout, into which, until the road-makers fished

them, no white man had ever cast a hook.

It was a good prospect, and we resolved to commit ourselves to the St.

John road. The services of a young fellow whom, by reason of his

impracticable French name, we called Joe, were secured, and after a

delay of twenty-four hours we were packed upon a Canadian buckboard

with hard-tack in one bag and oats in another, and the journey began.

It was Sunday, and we held up our heads more confidently when we got

beyond the throng of well-dressed church-goers. For ten miles we had a

good stone road and rattled along it at a lively pace. In about half

that distance we came to a large brick church, where we began to see

the rural population or _habitans._ They came mostly in two-wheeled

vehicles, some of the carts quite fancy, in which the young fellows

rode complacently beside their girls. The two-wheeler predominates in

Canada, and is of all styles and sizes. After we left the stone road,

we began to encounter the hills that are preliminary to the mountains.

The farms looked like the wilder and poorer parts of Maine or New

Hampshire. While Joe was getting a supply of hay of a farmer to take

into the woods for his horse, I walked through a field in quest of wild

strawberries. The season for them was past, it being the 20th of July,

and I found barely enough to make me think that the strawberry here is

far less pungent and high-flavored than with us.

The cattle in the fields and by the roadside looked very small and

delicate, the effect, no doubt, of the severe climate. We saw many rude

implements of agriculture, such as wooden plows shod with iron.

We passed several parties of men, women, and children from Quebec

picnicking in the “bush.” Here it was little more than a “bush;” but

while in Canada we never heard the woods designated by any other term.

I noticed, also, that when a distance of a few miles or of a fraction

of a mile is to be designated, the French Canadian does not use the

term “miles,” but says it’s so many acres through, or to the next

place.

This fondness for the “bush” at this season seems quite a marked

feature in the social life of the average Quebecker, and is one of the

original French traits that holds its own among them. Parties leave the

city in carts and wagons by midnight, or earlier, and drive out as far

as they can the remainder of the night, in order to pass the whole

Sunday in the woods, despite the mosquitoes and black flies. Those we

saw seemed a decent, harmless set, whose idea of a good time was to be

in the open air, and as far into the “bush” as possible.

The post-road, as the new St. John’s road is also called, begins twenty

miles from Quebec at Stoneham, the farthest settlement. Five miles into

the forest upon the new road is the hamlet of La Chance, the last house

till you reach the lake, one hundred and twenty miles distant. Our

destination the first night was La Chance’s; this would enable us to

reach the Jacques Cartier River, forty miles farther, where we proposed

to encamp, in the afternoon of the next day.

We were now fairly among the mountains, and the sun was well down

behind the trees when we entered upon the post-road. It proved to be a

wide, well-built highway, grass-grown, but in good condition. After an

hour’s travel we began to see signs of a clearing, and about six

o’clock drew up in front of the long, low, log habitation of La Chance.

Their hearthstone was outdoor at this season, and its smoke rose

through the still atmosphere in a frail column toward the sky. The

family was gathered here and welcomed us cordially as we drew up, the

master shaking us by the hand as if we were old friends. His English

was very poor, and our French was poorer, but, with Joe as a bridge

between us, communication on a pinch was kept up. His wife could speak

no English; but her true French politeness and graciousness was a

language we could readily understand. Our supper was got ready from our

own supplies, while we sat or stood in the open air about the fire. The

clearing comprised fifty or sixty acres of rough land in the bottom of

a narrow valley, and bore indifferent crops of oats, barley, potatoes,

and timothy grass. The latter was just in bloom, being a month or more

later than with us. The primitive woods, mostly of birch with a

sprinkling of spruce, put a high cavernous wall about the scene. How

sweetly the birds sang, their notes seeming to have unusual strength

and volume in this forest-bound opening! The principal singer was the

white-throated sparrow, which we heard and saw everywhere on the route.

He is called here _le siffleur_ (the whistler), and very delightful his

whistle was. From the forest came the evening hymn of a thrush, the

olive-backed perhaps, like but less clear and full than the veery’s.

In the evening we sat about the fire in rude homemade chairs, and had

such broken and disjointed talk as we could manage. Our host had lived

in Quebec and been a school-teacher there; he had wielded the birch

until he lost his health, when he came here and the birches gave it

back to him. He was now hearty and well, and had a family of six or

seven children about him.

We were given a good bed that night, and fared better than we expected.

About one o’clock I was awakened by suppressed voices outside the

window. Who could it be? Had a band of brigands surrounded the house?

As our outfit and supplies had not been removed from the wagon in front

of the door I got up, and, lifting one corner of the window paper,

peeped out: I saw in the dim moonlight four or five men standing about

engaged in low conversation. Presently one of the men advanced to the

door and began to rap and call the name of our host. Then I knew their

errand was not hostile; but the weird effect of that regular alternate

rapping and calling ran through my dream all the rest of the night.

Rat-tat, tat, tat,—La Chance; rat-tat, tat,—La Chance, five or six

times repeated before La Chance heard and responded. Then the door

opened and they came in, when it was jabber, jabber, jabber in the next

room till I fell asleep.

In the morning, to my inquiry as to who the travelers were and what

they wanted, La Chance said they were old acquaintances going

a-fishing, and had stopped to have a little talk.

Breakfast was served early, and we were upon the road before the sun.

Then began a forty-mile ride through a dense Canadian spruce forest

over the drift and boulders of the paleozoic age. Up to this point the

scenery had been quite familiar,—not much unlike that of the

Catskills,—but now there was a change; the birches disappeared, except

now and then a slender white or paper birch, and spruce everywhere

prevailed. A narrow belt on each side of the road had been blasted by

fire, and the dry, white stems of the trees stood stark and stiff. The

road ran pretty straight, skirting the mountains and threading the

valleys, and hour after hour the dark, silent woods wheeled past us.

Swarms of black flies—those insect wolves—waylaid us and hung to us

till a smart spurt of the horse, where the road favored, left them

behind. But a species of large horse-fly, black and vicious, it was not

so easy to get rid of. When they alighted upon the horse, we would

demolish them with the whip or with our felt hats, a proceeding the

horse soon came to understand and appreciate. The white and gray

Laurentian boulders lay along the roadside. The soil seemed as if made

up of decayed and pulverized rock, and doubtless contained very little

vegetable matter. It is so barren that it will never repay clearing and

cultivating.

Our course was an up-grade toward the highlands that separate the

watershed of St. John Lake from that of the St. Lawrence, and as we

proceeded the spruce became smaller and smaller till the trees were

seldom more than eight or ten inches in diameter. Nearly all of them

terminated in a dense tuft at the top, beneath which the stem would be

bare for several feet, giving them the appearance, my friend said, as

they stood sharply defined along the crests of the mountains, of cannon

swabs. Endless, interminable successions of these cannon swabs, each

just like its fellow, came and went, came and went, all day. Sometimes

we could see the road a mile or two ahead, and it was as lonely and

solitary as a path in the desert. Periods of talk and song and jollity

were succeeded by long stretches of silence. A buckboard upon such a

road does not conduce to a continuous flow of animal spirits. A good

brace for the foot and a good hold for the hand is one’s main lookout

much of the time. We walked up the steeper hills, one of them nearly a

mile long, then clung grimly to the board during the rapid descent of

the other side.

We occasionally saw a solitary pigeon—in every instance a cock—leading

a forlorn life in the wood, a hermit of his kind, or more probably a

rejected and superfluous male. We came upon two or three broods of

spruce grouse in the road, so tame that one could have knocked them

over with poles. We passed many beautiful lakes; among others, the Two

Sisters, one on each side of the road. At noon we paused at a lake in a

deep valley, and fed the horse and had lunch. I was not long in getting

ready my fishing tackle, and, upon a raft made of two logs pinned

together, floated out upon the lake and quickly took all the trout we

wanted.

Early in the afternoon we entered upon what is called _La Grande

Brûlure,_ or Great Burning, and to the desolation of living woods

succeeded the greater desolation of a blighted forest. All the

mountains and valleys, as far as the eye could see, had been swept by

the fire, and the bleached and ghostly skeletons of the trees alone met

the gaze. The fire had come over from the Saguenay, a hundred or more

miles to the east, seven or eight years before, and had consumed or

blasted everything in its way. We saw the skull of a moose said to have

perished in the fire. For three hours we rode through this valley and

shadow of death. In the midst of it, where the trees had nearly all

disappeared, and where the ground was covered with coarse wild grass,

we came upon the Morancy River, a placid yellow stream twenty or

twenty-five yards wide, abounding with trout. We walked a short

distance along its banks and peered curiously into its waters. The

mountains on either hand had been burned by the fire until in places

their great granite bones were bare and white.

At another point we were within ear-shot, for a mile or more, of a

brawling stream in the valley below us, and now and then caught a

glimpse of foaming rapids or cascades through the dense spruce,—a trout

stream that probably no man had ever fished, as it would be quite

impossible to do so in such a maze and tangle of woods.

We neither met, nor passed, nor saw any travelers till late in the

afternoon, when we descried far ahead a man on horseback. It was a

welcome relief. It was like a sail at sea. When he saw us he drew rein

and awaited our approach. He, too, had probably tired of the solitude

and desolation of the road. He proved to be a young Canadian going to

join the gang of workmen at the farther end of the road.

About four o’clock we passed another small lake, and in a few moments

more drew up at the bridge over the Jacques Cartier River, and our

forty-mile ride was finished. There was a stable here that had been

used by the road-builders, and was now used by the teams that hauled in

their supplies. This would do for the horse; a snug log shanty built by

an old trapper and hunter for use in the winter, a hundred yards below

the bridge, amid the spruces on the bank of the river, when rebedded

and refurnished, would do for us. The river at this point was a swift,

black stream from thirty to forty feet wide, with a strength and a

bound like a moose. It was not shrunken and emaciated, like similar

streams in a cleared country, but full, copious, and strong. Indeed,

one can hardly realize how the lesser water-courses have suffered by

the denuding of the land of its forest covering, until he goes into the

primitive woods and sees how bounding and athletic they are there. They

are literally well fed, and their measure of life is full. In fact, a

trout brook is as much a thing of the woods as a moose or deer, and

will not thrive well in the open country.

Three miles above our camp was Great Lake Jacques Cartier, the source

of the river, a sheet of water nine miles long and from one to three

wide; fifty rods below was Little Lake Jacques Cartier, an irregular

body about two miles across. Stretching away on every hand, bristling

on the mountains and darkling in the valleys, was the illimitable

spruce woods. The moss in them covered the ground nearly knee-deep, and

lay like newly fallen snow, hiding rocks and logs, filling depressions,

and muffling the foot. When it was dry, one could find a most

delightful couch anywhere.

The spruce seems to have colored the water, which is a dark amber

color, but entirely sweet and pure. There needed no better proof of the

latter fact than the trout with which it abounded, and their clear and

vivid tints. In its lower portions near the St. Lawrence, the Jacques

Cartier River is a salmon stream, but these fish have never been found

as near its source as we were, though there is no apparent reason why

they should not be.

There is perhaps no moment in the life of an angler fraught with so

much eagerness and impatience as when he first finds himself upon the

bank of a new and long-sought stream. When I was a boy and used to go

a-fishing, I could seldom restrain my eagerness after I arrived in

sight of the brook or pond, and must needs run the rest of the way.

Then the delay in rigging my tackle was a trial my patience was never

quite equal to. After I had made a few casts, or had caught one fish, I

could pause and adjust my line properly. I found some remnant of the

old enthusiasm still in me when I sprang from the buckboard that

afternoon and saw the strange river rushing by. I would have given

something if my tackle had been rigged so that I could have tried on

the instant the temper of the trout that had just broken the surface

within easy reach of the shore. But I had anticipated this moment

coming along, and had surreptitiously undone my rod-case and got my

reel out of my bag, and was therefore a few moments ahead of my

companion in making the first cast. The trout rose readily, and almost

too soon we had more than enough for dinner, though no “rod-smashers”

had been seen or felt. Our experience the next morning, and during the

day and the next morning, in the lake, in the rapids, in the pools, was

about the same: there was a surfeit of trout eight or ten inches long,

though we rarely kept any under ten, but the big fish were lazy and

would not rise; they were in the deepest water and did not like to get

up.

The third day, in the afternoon, we had our first and only thorough

sensation in the shape of a big trout. It came none too soon. The

interest had begun to flag. But one big fish a week will do. It is a

pinnacle of delight in the angler’s experience that he may well be

three days in working up to, and, once reached, it is three days down

to the old humdrum level again. At least it is with me. It was a dull,

rainy day; the fog rested low upon the mountains, and the time hung

heavily on our hands. About three o’clock the rain slackened and we

emerged from our den, Joe going to look after his horse, which had

eaten but little since coming into the woods, the poor creature was so

disturbed by the loneliness and the black flies; I, to make

preparations for dinner, while my companion lazily took his rod and

stepped to the edge of the big pool in front of camp. At the first

introductory cast, and when his fly was not fifteen feet from him upon

the water, there was a lunge and a strike, and apparently the fisherman

had hooked a boulder. I was standing a few yards below, engaged in

washing out the coffee-pail, when I heard him call out:—

“I have got him now!”

“Yes, I see you have,” said I, noticing his bending pole and moveless

line; “when I am through, I will help you get loose.”

“No, but I’m not joking,” said he; “I have got a big fish.”

I looked up again, but saw no reason to change my impression, and kept

on with my work.

It is proper to say that my companion was a novice at fly-fishing,

never having cast a fly till upon this trip.

Again he called out to me, but, deceived by his coolness and nonchalant

tones, and by the lethargy a glimpse of the fish, I gave little heed.

of the fish, I gave little heed. I knew very well that, if I had struck

a fish that held me down in that way, I should have been going through

a regular war-dance on that circle of boulder-tops, and should have

scared the game into activity if the hook had failed to wake him up.

But as the farce continued I drew near.

“Does that look like a stone or a log?” said my friend, pointing to his

quivering line, slowly cutting the current up toward the centre of the

pool.

My skepticism vanished in an instant, and I could hardly keep my place

on the top of the rock.

“I can feel him breathe,” said the now warming fisherman; “just feel of

that pole!”

I put my eager hand upon the butt, and could easily imagine I felt the

throb or pant of something alive down there in the black depths. But

whatever it was moved about like a turtle. My companion was praying to

hear his reel spin, but it gave out now and then only a few hesitating

clicks. Still the situation was excitingly dramatic, and we were all

actors. I rushed for the landing-net, but being unable to find it,

shouted desperately for Joe, who came hurrying back, excited before he

had learned what the matter was. The net had been left at the lake

below, and must be had with the greatest dispatch. In the mean time I

skipped about from boulder to boulder as the fish worked this way or

that about the pool, peering into the water to catch a glimpse of him,

for he had begun to yield a little to the steady strain that was kept

upon him. Presently I saw a shadowy, unsubstantial something just

emerge from the black depths, then vanish. Then I saw it again, and

this time the huge proportions of the fish were faintly outlined by the

white facings of his fins. The sketch lasted but a twinkling; it was

only a flitting shadow upon a darker background, but it gave me the

profoundest Ike Walton thrill I ever experienced. I had been a fisher

from my earliest boyhood. I came from a race of fishers; trout streams

gurgled about the roots of the family tree, and there was a long

accumulated and transmitted tendency and desire in me that that sight

gratified. I did not wish the pole in my own hands; there was quite

enough electricity overflowing from it and filling the air for me. The

fish yielded more and more to the relentless pole, till, in about

fifteen minutes from the time he was struck, he came to the surface,

then made a little whirlpool where he disappeared again.

But presently he was up a second time, and lashing the water into foam

as the angler led him toward the rock upon which I was perched net in

hand. As I reached toward him, down he went again, and, taking another

circle of the pool, came up still more exhausted, when, between his

paroxysms, I carefully ran the net over him and lifted him ashore,

amid, it is needless to say, the wildest enthusiasm of the spectators.

The congratulatory laughter of the loons down on the lake showed how

even the outsiders sympathized. Much larger trout have been taken in

these waters and in others, but this fish would have swallowed any

three we had ever before caught.

“What does he weigh?” was the natural inquiry of each; and we took

turns “hefting” him. But gravity was less potent to us just then than

usual, and the fish seemed astonishingly light.

“Four pounds,” we said; but Joe said more. So we improvised a scale: a

long strip of board was balanced across a stick, and our groceries

served as weights. A four-pound package of sugar kicked the beam

quickly; a pound of coffee was added; still it went up; then a pound of

tea, and still the fish had a little the best of it. But we called it

six pounds, not to drive too sharp a bargain with fortune, and were

more than satisfied. Such a beautiful creature! marked in every respect

like a trout of six inches. We feasted our eyes upon him for half an

hour. We stretched him upon the ground and admired him; we laid him

across a log and withdrew a few paces and admired him; we hung him

against the shanty, and turned our heads from side to side as women do

when they are selecting dress goods, the better to take in the full

force of the effect.

He graced the board or stump that afternoon, and was the sweetest fish

we had taken. The flesh was a deep salmon-color and very rich. We had

before discovered that there were two varieties of trout in these

waters, irrespective of size,—the red-fleshed and the

white-fleshed,—and that the former were the better.

This success gave an impetus to our sport that carried us through the

rest of the week finely. We had demonstrated that there were big trout

here, and that they would rise to a fly. Henceforth big fish were

looked to as a possible result of every excursion. To me, especially,

the desire at least to match my companion, who had been my pupil in the

art, was keen and constant. We built a raft of logs and upon it I

floated out upon the lake, whipping its waters right and left, morning,

noon, and night. Many fine trout came to my hand, and were released

because they did not fill the bill.

The lake became my favorite resort, while my companion preferred rather

the shore or the long still pool above, where there was a rude

makeshift of a boat, made of common box-boards.

Upon the lake you had the wildness and solitude at arm’s length, and

could better take their look and measure. You became something apart

from them; you emerged and had a vantage-ground like that of a mountain

peak, and could contemplate them at your ease. Seated upon my raft and

slowly carried by the current or drifted by the breeze, I had many a

long, silent look into the face of the wilderness, and found the

communion good. I was alone with the spirit of the forest-bound lakes,

and felt its presence and magnetism. I played hide-and-seek with it

about the nooks and corners, and lay in wait for it upon a little

island crowned with a clump of trees that was moored just to one side

of the current near the head of the lake.

Indeed, there is no depth of solitude that the mind does not endow with

some human interest. As in a dead silence the ear is filled with its

own murmur, so amid these aboriginal scenes one’s feelings and

sympathies become external to him, as it were, and he holds converse

with them. Then a lake is the ear as well as the eye of a forest. It is

the place to go to listen and ascertain what sounds are abroad in the

air. They all run quickly thither and report. If any creature had

called in the forest for miles about, I should have heard it. At times

I could hear the distant roar of water off beyond the outlet of the

lake. The sound of the vagrant winds purring here and there in the tops

of the spruces reached my ear. A breeze would come slowly down the

mountain, then strike the lake, and I could see its footsteps

approaching by the changed appearance of the water. How slowly the

winds move at times, sauntering like one on a Sunday walk! A breeze

always enlivens the fish; a dead calm and all pennants sink, your

activity with your fly is ill-timed, and you soon take the hint and

stop. Becalmed upon my raft, I observed, as I have often done before,

that the life of Nature ebbs and flows, comes and departs, in these

wilderness scenes; one moment her stage is thronged and the next quite

deserted. Then there is a wonderful unity of movement in the two

elements, air and water. When there is much going on in one, there is

quite sure to be much going on in the other. You have been casting,

perhaps, for an hour with scarcely a jump or any sign of life anywhere

about you, when presently the breeze freshens and the trout begin to

respond, and then of a sudden all the performers rush in: ducks come

sweeping by; loons laugh and wheel overhead, then approach the water on

a long, gentle incline, plowing deeper and deeper into its surface,

until their momentum is arrested, or converted into foam; the fish hawk

screams; the bald eagle goes flapping by, and your eyes and hands are

full. Then the tide ebbs, and both fish and fowl are gone.

Patiently whipping the waters of the lake from my rude float, I became

an object of great interest to the loons. I had never seen these birds

before in their proper habitat, and the interest was mutual. When they

had paused on the Hudson during their spring and fall migrations, I had

pursued them in my boat to try to get near them. Now the case was

reversed; I was the interloper now, and they would come out and study

me. Sometimes six or eight of them would be swimming about watching my

movements, but they were wary and made a wide circle. One day one of

their number volunteered to make a thorough reconnoissance. I saw him

leave his comrades and swim straight toward me. He came bringing first

one eye to bear upon me, then the other. When about half the distance

was passed over he began to waver and hesitate. To encourage him I

stopped casting, and taking off my hat began to wave it slowly to and

fro, as in the act of fanning myself. This started him again,—this was

a new trait in the creature that he must scrutinize more closely. On he

came, till all his markings were distinctly seen. With one hand I

pulled a little revolver from my hip pocket, and when the loon was

about fifty yards distant, and had begun to sidle around me, I fired:

at the flash I saw two webbed feet twinkle in the air, and the loon was

gone! Lead could not have gone down so quickly. The bullet cut across

the circles where he disappeared. In a few moments he reappeared a

couple of hundred yards away. “Ha-ha-ha-a-a,” said he, “ha-ha-ha-a-a,”

and “ha-ha-ha-a-a,” said his comrades, who had been looking on; and

“ha-ha-ha-a-a,” said we all, echo included. He approached a second

time, but not so closely, and when I began to creep back toward the

shore with my heavy craft, pawing the water first upon one side, then

the other, he followed, and with ironical laughter witnessed my efforts

to stem the current at the head of the lake. I confess it was enough to

make a more solemn bird than the loon laugh, but it was no fun for me,

and generally required my last pound of steam.

The loons flew back and forth from one lake to the other, and their

voices were about the only notable wild sounds to be heard.

One afternoon, quite unexpectedly, I struck my big fish in the head of

the lake. I was first advised of his approach by two or three trout

jumping clear from the water to get out of his lordship’s way. The

water was not deep just there, and he swam so near the surface that his

enormous back cut through. With a swirl he swept my fly under and

turned.

My hook was too near home, and my rod too near a perpendicular to

strike well. More than that, my presence of mind came near being

unhorsed by the sudden apparition of the fish. If I could have had a

moment’s notice, or if I had not seen the monster, I should have fared

better and the fish worse. I struck, but not with enough decision, and,

before I could reel up, my empty hook came back. The trout had carried

it in his jaws till the fraud was detected, and then spat it out. He

came a second time and made a grand commotion in the water, but not in

my nerves, for I was ready then, but failed to take the fly, and so to

get his weight and beauty in these pages. As my luck failed me at the

last, I will place my loss at the full extent of the law, and claim

that nothing less than a ten-pounder was spirited away from my hand

that day. I might not have saved him, netless as I was upon my cumbrous

raft; but I should at least have had the glory of the fight, and the

consolation of the fairly vanquished.

These trout are not properly lake trout, but the common brook trout.

The largest ones are taken with live bait through the ice in winter.

The Indians and the _habitans_ bring them out of the woods from here

and from Snow Lake, on their toboggans, from two and a half to three

feet long. They have kinks and ways of their own. About half a mile

above camp we discovered a deep oval bay to one side of the main

current of the river, that evidently abounded in big fish. Here they

disported themselves. It was a favorite feeding-ground, and late every

afternoon the fish rose all about it, making those big ripples the

angler delights to see. A trout, when he comes to the surface, starts a

ring about his own length in diameter; most of the rings in the pool,

when the eye caught them, were like barrel hoops, but the haughty trout

ignored all our best efforts; not one rise did we get. We were told of

this pool on our return to Quebec, and that other anglers had a similar

experience there. But occasionally some old fisherman, like a great

advocate who loves a difficult case, would set his wits to work and

bring into camp an enormous trout taken there.

I had been told in Quebec that I would not see a bird in the woods, not

a feather of any kind. But I knew I should, though they were not

numerous. I saw and heard a bird nearly every day, on the tops of the

trees about, that I think was one of the crossbills. The kingfisher was

there ahead of us with his loud clicking reel. The osprey was there,

too, and I saw him abusing the bald eagle, who had probably just robbed

him of a fish. The yellow-rumped warbler I saw, and one of the kinglets

was leading its lisping brood about through the spruces. In every

opening the white-throated sparrow abounded, striking up his clear

sweet whistle, at times so loud and sudden that one’s momentary

impression was that some farm boy was approaching, or was secreted

there behind the logs. Many times, amid those primitive solitudes, I

was quite startled by the human tone and quality of this whistle. It is

little more than a beginning; the bird never seems to finish the strain

suggested. The Canada jay was there also, very busy about some

important private matter.

One lowery morning, as I was standing in camp, I saw a lot of ducks

borne swiftly down by the current around the bend in the river a few

rods above. They saw me at the same instant and turned toward the

shore. On hastening up there, I found the old bird rapidly leading her

nearly grown brood through the woods, as if to go around our camp. As I

pursued them they ran squawking with outstretched stubby wings,

scattering right and left, and seeking a hiding-place under the logs

and débris. I captured one and carried it into camp. It was just what

Joe wanted; it would make a valuable decoy. So he kept it in a box, fed

it upon oats, and took it out of the woods with him.

We found the camp we had appropriated was a favorite stopping-place of

the carmen who hauled in supplies for the gang of two hundred

road-builders. One rainy day near nightfall no less than eight carts

drew up at the old stable, and the rain-soaked drivers, after picketing

and feeding their horses, came down to our fire. We were away, and Joe

met us on our return with the unwelcome news. We kept open house so far

as the fire was concerned; but our roof was a narrow one at the best,

and one or two leaky spots made it still narrower.

“We shall probably sleep out-of-doors to-night,” said my companion,

“unless we are a match for this posse of rough teamsters.”

But the men proved to be much more peaceably disposed than the same

class at home; they apologized for intruding, pleading the inclemency

of the weather, and were quite willing, with our permission, to take up

with pot-luck about the fire and leave us the shanty. They dried their

clothes upon poles and logs, and had their fun and their bantering amid

it all. An Irishman among them did about the only growling; he invited

himself into our quarters, and before morning had Joe’s blanket about

him in addition to his own.

On Friday we made an excursion to Great Lake Jacques Cartier, paddling

and poling up the river in the rude box-boat. It was a bright, still

morning after the rain, and everything had a new, fresh appearance.

Expectation was ever on tiptoe as each turn in the river opened a new

prospect before us. How wild, and shaggy, and silent it was! What

fascinating pools, what tempting stretches of trout-haunted water! Now

and then we would catch a glimpse of long black shadows starting away

from the boat and shooting through the sunlit depths. But no sound or

motion on shore was heard or seen. Near the lake we came to a long,

shallow rapid, when we pulled off our shoes and stockings, and, with

our trousers rolled above our knees, towed the boat up it, wincing and

cringing amid the sharp, slippery stones. With benumbed feet and legs

we reached the still water that forms the stem of the lake, and

presently saw the arms of the wilderness open and the long deep blue

expanse in their embrace. We rested and bathed, and gladdened our eyes

with the singularly beautiful prospect. The shadows of summer clouds

were slowly creeping up and down the sides of the mountains that hemmed

it in. On the far eastern shore, near the head, banks of what was

doubtless white sand shone dimly in the sun, and the illusion that

there was a town nestled there haunted my mind constantly. It was like

a section of the Hudson below the Highlands, except that these waters

were bluer and colder, and these shores darker, than even those Sir

Hendrik first looked upon; but surely, one felt, a steamer will round

that point presently, or a sail drift into view! We paddled a mile or

more up the east shore, then across to the west, and found such

pleasure in simply gazing upon the scene that our rods were quite

neglected. We did some casting after a while, but raised no fish of any

consequence till we were in the outlet again, when they responded so

freely that the “disgust of trout” was soon upon us.

At the rapids, on our return, as I was standing to my knees in the

swift, cold current, and casting into a deep hole behind a huge boulder

that rose four or five feet above the water amidstream, two trout, one

of them a large one, took my flies, and, finding the fish and the

current united too strong for my tackle, I sought to gain the top of

the boulder, in which attempt I got wet to my middle and lost my fish.

After I had gained the rock, I could not get away again with my clothes

on without swimming, which, to say nothing of wet garments the rest of

the way home, I did not like to do amid those rocks and swift currents;

so, after a vain attempt to communicate with my companion above the

roar of the water, I removed my clothing, left it together with my

tackle upon the rock, and by a strong effort stemmed the current and

reached the shore. The boat was a hundred yards above, and when I

arrived there my teeth were chattering with the cold, my feet were numb

with bruises, and the black flies were making the blood stream down my

back. We hastened back with the boat, and, by wading out into the

current again and holding it by a long rope, it swung around with my

companion aboard, and was held in the eddy behind the rock. I clambered

up, got my clothes on, and we were soon shooting downstream toward

home; but the winter of discontent that shrouded one half of me made

sad inroads upon the placid feeling of a day well spent that enveloped

the other, all the way to camp.

That night something carried off all our fish,—doubtless a fisher or

lynx, as Joe had seen an animal of some kind about camp that day.

I must not forget the two red squirrels that frequented the camp during

our stay, and that were so tame they would approach within a few feet

of us and take the pieces of bread or fish tossed to them. When a

particularly fine piece of hard-tack was secured, they would spin off

to their den with it somewhere near by.

Caribou abound in these woods, but we saw only their tracks; and of

bears, which are said to be plentiful, we saw no signs.

Saturday morning we packed up our traps and started on our return, and

found that the other side of the spruce-trees and the vista of the

lonely road going south were about the same as coming north. But we

understood the road better and the buck-board better, and our load was

lighter, hence the distance was more easily accomplished.

I saw a solitary robin by the roadside, and wondered what could have

brought this social and half-domesticated bird so far into these wilds.

In La Grande Brûlure, a hermit thrush perched upon a dry tree in a

swampy place and sang most divinely. We paused to listen to his clear,

silvery strain poured out without stint upon that unlistening solitude.

I was half persuaded I had heard him before on first entering the

woods.

We nooned again at No Man’s Inn on the banks of a trout lake, and fared

well and had no reckoning to pay. Late in the afternoon we saw a lonely

pedestrian laboring up a hill far ahead of us. When he heard us coming

he leaned his back against the bank, and was lighting his pipe as we

passed. He was an old man, an Irishman, and looked tired. He had come

from the farther end of the road, fifty miles distant, and had thirty

yet before him to reach town. He looked the dismay he evidently felt

when, in answer to his inquiry, we told him it was yet ten miles to the

first house, La Chance’s. But there was a roof nearer than that, where

he doubtless passed the night, for he did not claim hospitality at the

cabin of La Chance. We arrived there betimes, but found the “spare bed”

assigned to other guests; so we were comfortably lodged upon the

haymow. One of the boys lighted us up with a candle and made level

places for us upon the hay.

La Chance was one of the game wardens, or constables appointed by the

government to see the game laws enforced. Joe had not felt entirely at

his ease about the duck he was surreptitiously taking to town, and

when, by its “quack, quack,” it called upon La Chance for protection,

he responded at once. Joe was obliged to liberate it then and there,

and to hear the law read and expounded, and be threatened till he

turned pale beside. It was evident that they follow the home government

in the absurd practice of enforcing their laws in Canada. La Chance

said he was under oath not to wink at or permit any violation of the

law, and seemed to think that made a difference.

We were off early in the morning, and before we had gone two miles met

a party from Quebec who—must have been driving nearly all night to give

the black flies an early breakfast. Before long a slow rain set in; we

saw another party who had taken refuge in a house in a grove. When the

rain had become so brisk that we began to think of seeking shelter

ourselves, we passed a party of young men and boys—sixteen of them—in a

cart turning back to town, water-soaked and heavy (for the poor horse

had all it could pull), but merry and good-natured. We paused awhile at

the farmhouse where we had got our hay on going out, were treated to a

drink of milk and some wild red cherries, and when the rain slackened

drove on, and by ten o’clock saw the city eight miles distant, with the

sun shining upon its steep tinned roofs.

The next morning we set out by steamer for the Saguenay, and entered

upon the second phase of our travels, but with less relish than we

could have wished. Scenery hunting is the least satisfying pursuit I

have ever engaged in. What one sees in his necessary travels, or doing

his work, or going a-fishing, seems worth while, but the famous view

you go out in cold blood to admire is quite apt to elude you. Nature

loves to enter a door another hand has opened; a mountain view, or a

waterfall, I have noticed, never looks better than when one has just

been warmed up by the capture of a big trout. If we had been bound for

some salmon stream up the Saguenay, we should perhaps have possessed

that generous and receptive frame of mind-that open house of the

heart—which makes one “eligible to any good fortune,” and the grand

scenery would have come in as fit sauce to the salmon. An adventure, a

bit of experience of some kind, is what one wants when he goes forth to

admire woods and waters,—something to create a draught and make the

embers of thought and feeling brighten. Nature, like certain wary game,

is best taken by seeming to pass by her intent on other matters.

But without any such errand, or occupation, or indirection, we managed

to extract considerable satisfaction from the view of the lower St.

Lawrence and the Saguenay.

We had not paid the customary visit to the falls of the Montmorenci,

but we shall see them after all, for before we are a league from Quebec

they come into view on the left. A dark glen or chasm there at the end

of the Beauport Slopes seems suddenly to have put on a long white

apron. By intently gazing, one can see the motion and falling of the

water, though it is six or seven miles away. There is no sign of the

river above or below but this trembling white curtain of foam and

spray.

It was very sultry when we left Quebec, but about noon we struck much

clearer and cooler air, and soon after ran into an immense wave or puff

of fog that came drifting up the river and set all the fog-guns booming

along shore. We were soon through it into clear, crisp space, with room

enough for any eye to range in. On the south the shores of the great

river appear low and uninteresting, but on the north they are bold and

striking enough to make it up,—high, scarred, unpeopled mountain ranges

the whole way. The points of interest to the eye in the broad expanse

of water were the white porpoises that kept rolling, rolling in the

distance, all day. They came up like the perimeter of a great wheel

that turns slowly and then disappears. From mid-forenoon we could see

far ahead an immense column of yellow smoke rising up and flattening

out upon the sky and stretching away beyond the horizon. Its form was

that of some aquatic plant that shoots a stem up through the water, and

spreads its broad leaf upon the surface. This smoky lily-pad must have

reached nearly to Maine. It proved to be in the Indian country in the

mountains beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, and must have represented

an immense destruction of forest timber.

The steamer is two hours crossing the St. Lawrence from Rivière du Loup

to Tadousac. The Saguenay pushes a broad sweep of dark blue water down

into its mightier brother that is sharply defined from the deck of the

steamer. The two rivers seem to touch, but not to blend, so proud and

haughty is this chieftain from the north. On the mountains above

Tadousac one could see banks of sand left by the ancient seas. Naked

rock and sterile sand are all the Tadousacker has to make his garden

of, so far as I observed. Indeed, there is no soil along the Saguenay

until you get to Ha-ha Bay, and then there is not much, and poor

quality at that.

What the ancient fires did not burn the ancient seas have washed away.

I overheard an English resident say to a Yankee tourist, “You will

think you are approaching the end of the world up here.” It certainly

did suggest something apocryphal or antemundane,—a segment of the moon

or of a cleft asteroid, matter dead or wrecked. The world-builders must

have had their foundry up in this neighborhood, and the bed of this

river was doubtless the channel through which the molten granite

flowed. Some mischief-loving god has let in the sea while things were

yet red-hot, and there has been a time here. But the channel still

seems filled with water from the mid-Atlantic, cold and blue-black, and

in places between seven and eight thousand feet deep (one and a half

miles). In fact, the enormous depth of the Saguenay is one of the

wonders of physical geography. It is as great a marvel in its way as

Niagara.

The ascent of the river is made by night, and the traveler finds

himself in Ha-ha Bay in the morning. The steamer lies here several

hours before starting on her return trip, and takes in large quantities

of white birch wood, as she does also at Tadousac. The chief product of

the country seemed to be huckleberries, of which large quantities are

shipped to Quebec in rude board boxes holding about a peck each. Little

girls came aboard or lingered about the landing with cornucopias of

birch-bark filled with red raspberries; five cents for about half a

pint was the usual price. The village of St. Alphonse, where the

steamer tarries, is a cluster of small, humble dwellings dominated,

like all Canadian villages, by an immense church. Usually the church

will hold all the houses in the village; pile them all up and they

would hardly equal it in size; it is the one conspicuous object, and is

seen afar; and on the various lines of travel one sees many more

priests than laymen. They appear to be about the only class that stir

about and have a good time. Many of the houses were covered with

birch-bark,—the canoe birch,—held to its place by perpendicular strips

of board or split poles.

A man with a horse and a buckboard persuaded us to give him twenty-five

cents each to take us two miles up the St. Alphonse River to see the

salmon jump. There is a high saw-mill dam there which every salmon in

his upward journey tries his hand at leaping. A raceway has been

constructed around the dam for their benefit, which it seems they do

not use till they have repeatedly tried to scale the dam. The day

before our visit three dead fish were found in the pool below, killed

by too much jumping. Those we saw had the jump about all taken out of

them; several did not get more than half their length out of the water,

and occasionally only an impotent nose would protrude from the foam.

One fish made a leap of three or four feet and landed on an apron of

the dam and tumbled helplessly back; he shot up like a bird and rolled

back like a clod. This was the only view of salmon, the buck of the

rivers, we had on our journey.

It was a bright and flawless midsummer day that we sailed down the

Saguenay, and nothing was wanting but a good excuse for being there.

The river was as lonely as the St. John’s road; not a sail or a

smokestack the whole sixty-five miles. The scenery culminates at Cape

Trinity, where the rocks rise sheer from the water to a height of

eighteen hundred feet. This view dwarfed anything I had ever before

seen. There is perhaps nothing this side the Yosemite chasm that equals

it, and, emptied of its water, this chasm would far surpass that famous

cañon, as the river here is a mile and a quarter deep. The bald eagle

nests in the niches in the precipice secure from any intrusion. Immense

blocks of the rock had fallen out, leaving areas of shadow and clinging

overhanging masses that were a terror and fascination to the eye. There

was a great fall a few years ago, just as the steamer had passed from

under and blown her whistle to awake the echoes. The echo came back,

and with it a part of the mountain that astonished more than it

delighted the lookers-on. The pilot took us close around the base of

the precipice that we might fully inspect it. And here my eyes played

me a trick the like of which they had never done before. One of the

boys of the steamer brought to the forward deck his hands full of

stones, that the curious ones among the passengers might try how easy

it was to throw one ashore. “Any girl ought to do it,” I said to

myself, after a man had tried and had failed to clear half the

distance. Seizing a stone, I cast it with vigor and confidence, and as

much expected to see it smite the rock as I expected to live. “It is a

good while getting there,” I mused, as I watched its course: down, down

it went; there, it will ring upon the granite in half a breath; no,

down—into the water, a little more than halfway! “Has my arm lost its

cunning?” I said, and tried again and again, but with like result. The

eye was completely at fault. There was a new standard of size before it

to which it failed to adjust itself. The rock is so enormous and towers

so above you that you get the impression it is much nearer than it

actually is. When the eye is full it says, “Here we are,” and the hand

is ready to prove the fact; but in this case there is an astonishing

discrepancy between what the eye reports and what the hand finds out.

Cape Eternity, the wife of this colossus, stands across a chasm through

which flows a small tributary of the Saguenay, and is a head or two

shorter, as becomes a wife, and less rugged and broken in outline.

From Rivière du Loup, where we passed the night and ate our first

“Tommy-cods,” our thread of travel makes a big loop around New

Brunswick to St. John, thence out and down through Maine to Boston,—a

thread upon which many delightful excursions and reminiscences might be

strung. We traversed the whole of the valley of the Metapedia, and

passed the doors of many famous salmon streams and rivers, and heard

everywhere the talk they inspire; one could not take a nap in the car

for the excitement of the big fish stories he was obliged to overhear.

The Metapedia is a most enticing-looking stream; its waters are as

colorless as melted snow; I could easily have seen the salmon in it as

we shot along, if they had come out from their hiding-places. It was

the first white-water stream we had seen since leaving the Catskills;

for all the Canadian streams are black or brown, either from the iron

in the soil or from the leechings of the spruce swamps. But in New

Brunswick we saw only these clear, silver-shod streams; I imagined they

had a different ring or tone also. The Metapedia is deficient in good

pools in its lower portions; its limpid waters flowing with a tranquil

murmur over its wide, evenly paved bed for miles at a stretch. The

salmon pass over these shallows by night and rest in the pools by day.

The Restigouche, which it joins, and which is a famous salmon stream

and the father of famous salmon streams, is of the same complexion and

a delight to look upon. There is a noted pool where the two join, and

one can sit upon the railroad bridge and count the noble fish in the

lucid depths below. The valley here is fertile, and has a cultivated,

well-kept look.

We passed the Jacquet, the Belledune, the Nepissisquit, the Miramichi

(“happy retreat”) in the night, and have only their bird-call names to

report.