_FOOTPRINTS_
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While the camp-fire was smoking, for the wood was green and I was
willing that my companion should worry over it, I strolled up the long,
sandy beach with no particular object in mind and quite ready to meet
and parley with any creature that I overtook. I saw only evidences of
what had been there, or what I supposed had been. There were tracks that
I took to be those of herons, and others that suggested a raccoon in
search of crayfish. Here and there a mouse had hurried by. What lively
times had been kept up at low tide within sight of the tent door! and
yet we knew nothing of it. But these tracks were not well defined, and
therefore why not misinterpreted? I have not suggested all the
possibilities of the case—— Here my meditations were checked by the call
to breakfast, but I took up the subject again as I walked alone in the
woods, for I was but the companion of a worker, not one myself.
It occurred to me that when we read of hunters, or perhaps have followed
a trapper in his rounds, we have been led to think that footprints are
animal autography that the initiated can read without hesitation. To
distinguish the track of a rabbit from that of a raccoon is readily
done, and we can go much further, and determine whether the animal was
walking or running, made a leap here or squatted there; but can we go to
any length, and decipher every impress an animal may have made in
passing over the sand or mud? I think not. I have seen a twig sent
spinning a long distance up the beach at low tide, making a line of
equidistant marks that were extremely life-like in appearance. A cloud
of dead leaves have so dotted an expanse of mud that a gunner insisted
there had been a flock of plover there a few moments before he arrived.
All depends, or very much does, on the condition of the surface marked.
If very soft and yielding, the plainest bird-tracks may be distorted,
and a mere dot, on the other hand, may have its outline so broken as to
appear as though made by a bird or mammal. Still, tracks are a safe
guide in the long run, and, whether our opinion as to them be correct or
not, the rambler finds something worth seeing, and he goes on anything
but a wild-goose chase who sometimes finds himself mistaken. It is well
to check our confidence occasionally and realize the limits of our
power.
Opportunity afforded while in camp, and I made a short study of
footprints. With a field-glass I noted many birds, and then going to the
spot, examined the impressions their feet had made. A night-heron did
not come down flatly upon its feet with outspread toes, and so the
tracks were quite different from the impressions made when the bird
walked. Crows, I noticed, both hopped and walked, and the marks were
very different, the former being broad and ill-defined in comparison
with the traces of the same bird’s stately tread. Had the bird not been
seen, any one would have supposed two creatures had been keeping close
company, or that some one individual had passed by in the very path of
another. The purple grakle and red-winged blackbird made tracks too much
alike to be distinguished, yet these birds have not the same size or
shape of foot. A water-snake came up over the mud and left a line of
marks upon the sand that could not be recognized as that of any animal,
except it might be a faint resemblance to the trail of a mussel. I
chased a dozen crayfish over a mud flat, and their backward and sidewise
leapings caused an old gunner to say there had been plover about. A
blue-winged teal made a long double line of dents in the sand before it
rose clear of the beach, and these were very like many a footprint I had
previously seen. What, then, must we think of the fossil footprints of
which so much has been written? As different species, a long series of
these impressions in the rock have been described and given
high-sounding titles. I am not entitled to an opinion, but have doubts,
nevertheless, of the wisdom of considering every slightly different form
as made by a different creature. I have given my reasons, and will only
add another instance, one of greater significance than all as bearing
upon the question. I startled a slumbering jumping-mouse last summer and
it bounded across the smooth sand bared by the outgoing tide. Its track
then was one made by its body rather than the extremities, and a curious
dent in the river-shore’s smooth surface it was; but before taking again
to the woods it walked in its peculiar way, and the little footprints
were quite distinct and unmistakably those of a small mammal. Had the
two sets of markings been preserved in a slab of sandstone, no
ichnologist would have recognized the truth, but probably would have
said, “Here is a case where some leaping creature has overtaken a small
rodent and devoured it.”
Difficult as fossil footprints may be to decipher, they call up with
wonderful distinctness the long ago of other geologic ages. It is hard
to realize that the stone of which our houses are built once formed the
tide-washed shore of a primeval river or the bed of a lake or ocean gone
long before man came upon the scene.
But the footprints of to-day concern me more. Looking over the side of
the boat, I saw several mussels moving slowly along and making a deep,
crooked groove in the ripple-marked sand, “streaking the ground with
sinuous trace,” as Milton puts it; and the school of blunt-headed
minnows made little dents in the sand wherever the water was shallow,
when they turned suddenly and darted off-shore. This sand seemed very
unstable, and a little agitation of the water caused many a mark to be
wiped out; and yet we find great slabs of ripple-marked and foot-marked
sandstone. I picked up such a piece not long ago on which were rain-drop
marks. This is the story of a million years ago; but who ever found
Indian moccasin-marks not two centuries old? The footprints that could
tell us many a wonderful story are all gone and the tale of a rain-drop
remains. This is a bit aggravating. Here where we have pitched our camp,
or very near it, was a Swedish village in 1650 and later, and for two
days I have been hunting for evidence of the fact,—some bit of broken
crockery, rusty nail, glass, pewter spoon, anything,—but in vain.
History records the village, and correctly, without a doubt, but there
are no footprints here, nor other trace to show that a white man ever
saw the place until our tent was pitched upon the beach.
Towards evening I had occasion to renew my youth,—in other words, “run
on an errand,” as my mother put it,—and going half a mile through the
woods, I came to a narrow but well-worn path. This was so akin to my
footprint thoughts of the morning that I gladly followed it instead of
making a short cut. It was fortunate, for the path led directly to where
I wished to go, and our theoretical geography, as usual, was terribly
out of joint. As it was, on the edge of an old village I found a very
old man in a very old house. His memory as to the earlier half of the
century was excellent, and he gave me the desired information and more.
I spoke of the path through the woods, and he chuckled to himself.
“Through the woodses, eh? Well, when I made the path, goin’ and comin’
through the brush that wasn’t shoulder-high, there was no trees then.
That was more’n forty years ago.”
"No, John, ’twa’n’t," piped a weak voice from the interior of the little
cottage; “’twa’n’t mor’n——”
"Laws, man, don’t mind her. She disputes the almanac, and every winter
gets in New Year’s ahead of Christmas."
I did not stop to argue the matter, but hurried campward, glad that, if
I could find no footprints of human interest and historic, I at least
had followed a path made forty years ago,—a path that had been worn
among bushes and now led through a forest. It was indeed suggestive. By
the camp-fire that night I vowed to plant a forest where now there was
but a thicket, and in my dreams I walked through a noble wood.
Think how much might be done to beautify the world, and how little is
accomplished.
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