ravine upon this wooden tile. The old weather-worn log was slippery with
mould and mosses. In making his daring and perilous trip, the youth lost
his footing, and fell headlong into the heart of the chasm. Following the
fall, a terrific thunderstorm passed through the Hoosac, and night closed
over the chasm. The next morning the boy’s lifeless body was recovered.
The wooden structure is now replaced with an iron tiling.
I passed on down the path on the west bank, until I reached an immense
marble boulder, which was draped with dainty ferns and mosses. Little
rivulets flowed from its sides, and climbing around to its southern brow,
I was delighted to find many luxuriant plants of Walking Ferns—this
making the fifth excursion in succession in which I had found this rare
plant.
I entered the ravine below the boulder, and picked my way up the chasm
to the southern portal of the arch, where I became wet through from the
mist above, as I ventured to look through the cave. Returning, I found
a path up the east bank leading to Marble Quarry and the mill below,
where grave-stones, door-stones, and various ornaments are manufactured.
The most useful piece of work ever turned out here was, in my mind, the
Williams College sun-dial tablet, which Hawthorne observed in 1838 as
being as large as the top of a hogshead.[59] I have later discovered
that this dial was placed near that old Astronomical Observatory on
Consumption Hill, near the present College Library,—the first building of
its kind erected in the United States, for the study of the worlds above,
by Professor Albert Hopkins, in 1838. The bronze sun-dial was supported
upon the marble table which Hawthorne saw at the quarry. Around it was
carved in the soft marble the now dim inscription:
“HOW IS IT THAT YE DO NOT DISCERN THIS TIME.”
This dial is now among the relics in the College Museum.
The overhanging crag, near the southern side of the arch, will in
another half-century or more tumble also into the ravine. One large pine
tree and many bushes, growing on this leaning tower, are plying their
roots deeply in the marble fissures, and are slowly splitting the rock
asunder. I have designated this pile Captain Skipper’s Monument, in
memory of him who recorded the last evidences of the Beaver Dam across
this stream. Tradition says that the beavers labored centuries before
the white man arrived in the Mayunsook Valley, building better than they
realized, since they erected a dam which stopped the rippling flow of
Hudson Brook. Originally, this stream flowed nearer the surface of the
Natural Bridge. It is believed by some that the dam clogged the driftwood
from the domes, and thus set the waters back. The force of the eddies,
combined with the chemical action of the waters whirling among the logs
and rocks, eroded dimples in the soft marble, until they wore the present
archway through.
[Illustration: =The Marble Arch of the Natural Bridge, North Adams,
Massachusetts.=
“Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as
useful, as any; rocks at least as well covered with lichens, and a soil
which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature.
What if we cannot read Rome, or Greece, Etruria, or Carthage, or Egypt,
or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs bare?”—THOREAU.]
I followed down the bed of the stream, stepping from rock to rock easily,
until I reached the path far below the Marble Quarry, and entered The
Beaver, a little village where every one works like the small animals
for which it is named. I was now near the junction of Hudson Brook and
the Mayunsook; and not wishing to return to the City until sunset, I
scrambled up the slippery sides of the hemlock hills above the little
river. With the echo of the cavern’s tumultuous roar still in my ears,
I now heard, in pleasant contrast, the distant gentle murmur of that
flowing stream. When I departed from the vales of these talking streams,
I carried with me back to the busy world the remembrance of the voicing
fantasies of their songs of wilderness and solitude.
XIX
Orange Mountains, and Salt Meadows, New Jersey
The weapons with which we have gained our most important
victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father
to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bush-whack,
the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted with the
blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a
hard fought field.—THOREAU, _Excursions_.
August 12th I started for the Orange Mountains, in search of Cardinal
Flowers, and various other blossoms, which I hoped to find about Eagle
Rock. Arriving at those ragged cliffs, overhanging the brow of the
mountains above West Orange, I climbed up the winding stone stairs and
entered the park. The woods were strewn with small yellow flowers and
ferns.
The view from the Rock is vast, as the eye sweeps off over the Great Salt
Meadows beyond Newark, to Brooklyn Heights. On a clear day, the tall
buildings of New York and the piers of Brooklyn Bridge are discernible.
The Goddess of Liberty in the Bay also stands out clearly, and the
slow-moving sails and funnels of outgoing steamers are visible. Most
people seek Eagle Rock for this view alone.
Farther back in the woods, in May and June, the Pinxter-Flower, False
Solomon’s Seal, yellow and blue violets, bluets, and anemone everywhere
decorate the rocky soil. Numerous tall weeds towered coarsely along the
mountainsides, to-day flaunting their disagreeable perfume ever before me.
I followed southwesterly, along the summit for a mile or more, to Crystal
Lake, passing the park called “Wildmont,” to the right of which stands
Cobblestone Cottage. The building appears very ancient.
All the vast solitudes of the parks of Orange Mountains are locked
within gates, and the entrance labelled, “_No Trespassing, Under Penalty
of the Law_.” Law is a specific designation for a certain kind of a
broad-headed, bow-legged quadruped—a thoroughbred species not mentioned
in the scientific annals of the Hoosac Highlands. After passing the
lake, I followed up the swamp toward the distant walls of Wildmont, very
desirous of trespassing and seeing the Wild Law in his cage. Soon I found
a place where the stones were tumbled out, and where, by lifting a barbed
wire, I could crawl through. So happily and leisurely I began to trespass
about the woods. I found luxuriant colonies of the Maiden-Hair Fern,
tall spirit-like spikes of feathery flowers, and club-like spikes of
fringed-purple weeds not seen in the Hoosac Valley. They were so common
that I did not gather any, so I never determined their title. In the
deeper pools grew a few plants of the Skunk Cabbage. The low bushes and
plants were overgrown and coarse in the extreme, amid the dense shades
of chestnut and elm trees. The forest, apparently, was still in its
primeval state.
As I approached the cottage of Wildmont, I ran upon an old cellar hole,
where a building had once stood. The ruins were now prettily covered
with myrtle and ivy. From this site, between the parting boughs, I
caught glints of a sea of blues in the valley of the Oranges, which was
overflowing with glistening house-tops and church-spires. Here I turned
about and found a great colony of Indian Pipes.
As I turned from the shades of Wildmont, I walked toward Crystal Lake,
along a dry brook bed. Here, indeed, I found a Cardinal show; over
a hundred spikes of that brilliant flower danced before my eyes and
lighted up the glooms. I had never before seen such flowers as these.
The Cardinal-Flower (_Lobelia cardinalis_) is not frequent in Hoosac
Valley—at least I have never collected it there. John Burroughs writes
of it: “It is not so much something colored as it is color itself.”[60]
I gathered many spikes of this flaring colored flower, and passed out
to the shore of the lake; children, with their sailboats, ran teasingly
after me, until I escaped to a quiet retreat where ice-cream was served.
The waiter and the children alike were strangely unfamiliar with this
flower, growing so close to their homes.
I passed out over the rocky slopes northward, where I ate huckleberries
to my heart’s content. The ghost-like Feathery Plumes, and common
Purple Clubs of this region towered everywhere among the woods; and
low beautiful plants of the Yellow Gerardia were in full bloom. As I
rounded the slope, below the Rock, I collected a fine specimen of the
gorgeously colored Orange Butterfly-Weed, or Pleurisy-Root (_Asclepias
tuberosa_), of the Milkweed Family. In the swamp farther south on the
Orange Mountains, I have formerly collected the Swamp Milkweed flowers,
which are similar to Butterfly-Weed, save that they are of a delicate
rose-purple color. Our common species northward is the Purple-Flowered
Silkweed. It grows along our roadside walls and river banks, and its
tender leaves are used as greens, proving very delicious food.
I sat some time on the hillside under Eagle Rock, recalling the various
flowers collected along the Northfield Road the year past. Llewellyn and
Hutton Parks, along these summits, are always fragrant with blossoms in
May and June. I once spent a holiday in Pleasant Valley beyond St. Cloud,
in May and June, collecting among other flowers the beautiful Tulip-Tree
blossoms (_Liriodendron Tulipifera_), which some lads graciously gathered
for me.
The swamps and woods about this vale produce about the same species of
flowers and trees as the hills of Mosholu and Lowerre above New York
City—marsh marigolds, violets, anemones, dogwoods, and glowing apple
orchards that one does not soon forget. One rare flower, however, graces
the Orlando Williams Swamp in Pleasant Valley that I find nowhere else.
It is the Painted-Cup (_Castilleja coccinea_) of the Figwort Family. It
is very similar to the Scarlet Painted-Cup that Bryant wrote about as
growing on the prairies.[61]
[Illustration: =The Star-blossoms of the Grass of Parnassus= (_Parnassia
Caroliniana_), =and the Ladies’ Tresses.=]
Frequently country folk call this flower Indian’s Paint-Brush; it
somewhat resembles a clover tuft daubed with vermilion. The species found
in New Jersey and Staten Island are the same. Thoreau found the scarlet
tufts of the Painted-Cup “very common in the meadows” on Staten Island
in 1843.[62] The Alpine Painted-Cups of the White and Green Mountains
are somewhat different from the species found southward and westward. A
friend collected flowers of these strange plants near Woodmont in the
vicinity of New Haven, and about Marbledale, Connecticut. These are
typical little Figworts.
The lobelias, gerardias, milkweeds, butter-and-eggs, Leopard’s-Bane
(_Arnica acaulis_), and field daisies are common in the pastures and
woods of St. Cloud and Pleasant Valley. In the distant swamps the Sweet
Bay Magnolia (_Magnolia Virginiana_) and the Tulip Tree are the only two
common northern species of the Magnolia Family. A single tulip tree is
found in the Hoosac Valley, at North Pownal. Tulip trees are abundant in
New Haven, Connecticut, and in Bronx Park, and also on Orange Mountains.
They thrive especially westward and southward, where they become
beautiful flowering trees—often one hundred and forty feet high.
As I came down the Northfield Road from St. Cloud, in June, 1896, I
found the pastures full of blooming briar-roses, and the meadows waving
with white daisies and golden arnica. The latter flower is replaced in
the meadows of the Hoosac Highlands by great patches of the Devil’s
Paint-Brush or Orange Hawkweed (_Hieracium aurantiacum_), an emigrant
weed from Europe, which is very pretty and fragrant. The Purple Gerardia
(_Gerardia purpurea_), the Blue Lobelias (_Lobelia syphilitica_), and
_Lobelia spicata_ grow abundantly in Pownal-on-the-Hoosac in June.
As I passed homeward through the Salt Meadows, beyond Newark, on the new
Plank Road to Desbrosses Ferry, I began to observe the large pink-purple
blossoms of the Swamp Rose-Mallow (_Hibiscus Moscheutos_) and the
Marsh-Mallow (_Althæa officinalis_), whose roots contain a mucilaginous
substance, and which are closely allied to our cultivated hollyhocks. I
soon neared an open ditch by the road, filled with blossoming Arrow-Head
(_Sagittaria latifolia_) and Pickerel-Weed (_Pontederia cordata_). The
former produces beautiful waxen white flowers, and the latter, blue
spikes of ragged blossoms. Not far from this mud-hole on the dry, sandy
roadside, I gathered the rank-scented Jimson-Weed or Thorn-Apple (_Datura
Stramonium_), a poisonous emigrant weed from Asia, whose Arabic name was
_Tatorah_. It is common everywhere about these regions in waste ground,
as well as along Kingsbridge Road and Old East Chester near the City. I
have also observed it near the poor-house in New Haven, but never in the
Hoosac Valley region.
The Salt Meadows of New Jersey, during August and September, are rolling
swales of tall sedges and cat-tail grasses. Later in the season, when the
golden-rod and purple asters are frozen and brown, and thrown in heaps
upon the ground by the autumn winds, one may see great flocks of geese,
and the comical purple grackle—the crow blackbird—flying southward over
these desolate lands. A deep, weird solitude surrounds these unfathomable
swamps. The foot of man and his bog-hoe as yet have never penetrated
their regions, although within hearing of Old Trinity’s chimes.
In the Hoosac Valley autumn is a season of glory. Late August produces
the gorgeous colored tiger lilies. The swampy meadows in September
are brightened with the delicate greenish-white stars of the Grass-of
Parnassus (_Parnassia Caroliniana_), first found on that ancient Mount
Parnassus in Greece, and described and named by Dioscorides in Christ’s
day. Innumerable asters and golden-rod brighten the roadside hedges.
In the open clearings of bushy pastures grows the Woolly Moonshine—the
“everlasting” of which Thoreau wrote. It is sometimes called Cud-Weed,
or Balsam-Weed (_Gnaphalium decurrens_). The Pearly-Everlasting or
None-so-Pretty (_Anaphalis margaritacea_) is peculiarly fragrant and
beautiful, banked in among the late golden-rods, and the crimson and
chrome-colored autumn leaves of sumach and blackberry briars against the
dark green pines. I have found these flowers unfolding amid the snows as
late as December. Late spikes of Orchids, the Ladies’ Tresses of genus
_Gyrostachys_, the Bitter-Buttons or Tansy-Weed (_Tanacetum vulgare_),
numerous thistles (_Carduus_), the velvety leaves of St. Peter’s Mullen
(_Verbascum Thapsus_), Wormwood (_Artemisia Absinthium_) grow along
the roadsides over Mount Œta, while Thimble-Berry blossoms and the
Bluebells-of-New-England fill in the waste places of fences and dug-away
ledges.
When the cooler days of October come, we may look for that blue flower
of heaven, the Fringed Gentian (_Gentiana crinita_), along the roadsides
near the swamps of Etchowog, modestly and patiently waiting for the
autumnal skies of blue:
Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean well.[63]
So come and fade alike the rarest flowers and the commonest weeds among
the Highlands of the Hoosac, the valley of peaceful waters.
It is in the deepest and most secluded swamps that the shy orchid blooms,
far beyond the realm of lawn or garden. Few indeed realize what a world
of beauty and order lies sleeping unsought and unseen in the mossy
recesses of our mountains,—a wonderland of discovery to any one who
persistently, though reverently, seeks to lure from Nature the secrets of
her deep retreats.
[Illustration: =The Hoosac River, Pownal, Vermont.=
“_Flow on, fair Hoosac, with your gentle song,_
_Flow peacefully through all the centuries long;_
_To that unbounded sea, Eternity!_
_That God decrees alike for Man and Thee._”
G. G. N.]
APPENDIX
NEW ENGLAND ORCHIDS
Nature, in fact that parent of all things, has produced no animated being
for the purpose solely of eating; she has willed that it should be born
to satisfy the wants of others, and in its very vitals has implanted
medicaments conducive to health.... Cato has recommended that flowers for
making chaplets should be cultivated in the gardens: varieties remarkable
for delicacy, which it is quite impossible to express, inasmuch as no
individual can find such faculties for describing them as Nature does,
for bestowing on them their numerous tints. Nature, who here in especial
shows herself in a sportive mood, takes a delight in the prolific display
of her varied productions. The other plants she has produced for our
uses and our nutriment, and to them accordingly she has granted years,
and even ages, of duration; but as for the flowers and their perfumes,
she has given them birth for but a day—a mighty lesson to man, we see,
to teach him that that which in its career is most beauteous and most
attractive to the eye is the very first to fade and die.
Even the limner’s art possesses no resources for reproducing colors of
the flowers in all their varied tints and combinations, whether we view
them in groups alternately blending their hues or whether arranged in
festoons, each variety by itself.—PLINY, _Natural History_ (23-79 A.D.).
Orchidaceæ
_Orchid Family_
[In compiling the appendix of New England Orchids, the author has
followed the order of classification and nomenclature adopted by Messrs.
Britton and Brown in the _Illustrated Flora_ of Northeastern North
America, 1896, without doubt the highest and most systematic arrangement
according to the progress of evolution and the advancement of the science
of botany in North America.]
ORCHIDACEÆ, Lindley, _Natural System_, 2d ed., p. 336. 1836.
=Perennial= plants arising from bulbs, corms, fibrous, or tuberous roots.
=Stems= or =scapes= 2 inches to 3-4 feet high. =Leaves= parallel-veined,
sheathing, and plicate, sometimes reduced to scales. =Flowers= perfect
or irregular, solitary or in a spiked raceme, usually subtended by a
leafy bract. =Perianth= consists of 6 segments. The =calyx=, or outer
whorl, consisting of 3 parts (sepals); the =corolla=, or inner whorl,
consisting of 3 parts (petals). The third petal is designated =labellum=
(lip), or nectary, and is in orchids the most beautiful part, assuming
grotesque shapes ornamented with spurs and fringes. The =stamens= and
=pistils= are variously united with the style, forming an unsymmetrical
column. =Anther=, 1, or in _Cypripedium_ 2; 2-celled. =Pollen= in 2-8
pear-shaped, usually stalked masses (_pollinia_), united by elastic
threads, the masses waxy or powdery, attached at the base to a viscid
disk (gland). =Stigma=, a viscid surface, facing the labellum beneath
the rostellum, or in a cavity between the anther-sacs (_clinandrium_).
=Seed-capsule= (ovary) inferior, long and twisted, 3-angled, 1-celled.
=Ovules= minute, spindle-shaped, and numerous; =embryo= fleshy. The
colors of orchids are various and beautiful; their fragrance heavy and
exquisite in several species. Orchids were known and designated by
Linnæus in 1753 as _Gynandrous_, meaning “stamens and pistils united to
the column.” There are about 410 genera and from 6,000 to 10,000 species,
widely distributed throughout the damp and wooded regions of the world.
More abundant in the humid atmosphere of the tropics, where many species
are air-plants or epiphytes. The orchids of the temperate and sub-arctic
regions are terrestrial, drawing their nourishment from the earth.
North American Orchids, North of Mexico 150-160
New England Orchids 48-56
Hoosac Valley Orchids 40-42
Genera of Orchid Family in New England
GENERA XV. SPECIES 56.
I. _Cypripedium_ Linnæus, 1753—6 species.
II. _Orchis_ Linnæus, 1753—2 species.
III. _Habenaria_ Willdenow, 1805—18 species.
IV. _Pogonia_ Jussieu, 1789—4 species.
V. _Arethusa_ Linnæus, 1753—1 species.
VI. _Gyrostachys_ Persoon, 1807—6 species.
(_Spiranthes_ Richard, 1818.[64])
VII. _Listera_ R. Brown, 1813—3 species.
VIII. _Peramium_ Salisbury, 1812—4 species.
(_Goodyera_ R. Brown, 1813.[64])
IX. _Achroanthes_ Rafinesque, 1808—2 species.
(_Microstylis_ Nuttall, 1818.[64])
X. _Leptorchis_ Thouars, 1808—2 species.
(_Liparis_ Richard, 1818.[64])
XI. _Calypso_ Salisbury, 1807—1 species.[65]
XII. _Corallorhiza_ R. Brown, 1813—4 species.
XIII. _Tipularia_ Nuttall, 1818—1 species.[65]
XIV. _Limodorum_ Linnæus, 1753—1 species.
(_Calopogon_ R. Brown, 1813.[64])
XV. _Aplectrum_ Nuttall, 1818—1 species.[65]
I
Cypripedium
Linnæus, 1753
LADY’S SLIPPER—MOCCASIN-FLOWER
English—Lady’s Slipper.
Latin—Calceolus D. Mariæ, or Marianus.
German—Frauenschuh, or Marienschuh.
French—Sabot de la Vierge, or Soulier de Notre Dame.
Italian—Pontoffala, or scarpa della Madonna.
Algonquin Indian—Mawcahsun, or Makkasin-Flower.
North American—Indian Moccasin-Flower.
The generic name, _Cypripedium_, comes from the Greek, referring to
Κύπρις, a former name of Venus, the Divine Mother of the Romans before
Christ, and πόδιον, signifying sock, or slipper.
=Glandular= pubescent plants. =Anthers=, 2. =Labellum= shoe-shaped, or
conical. =Sepals= and =petals= similar in texture; lower sepals wholly or
imperfectly united in all species save _C. arietinum_ R. Brown. =Stem=, 6
inches to 3 feet high. =Flowers=, 1-4 in the Atlantic region and 1-12 in
the Pacific region; pendulous, alternating in a bracted raceme. =Pollen=
granulose, without caudicle or glands. =Fragrance= heavy, aromatic, or
oily save in two exquisitely sweet species, _C. parviflorum_ Salisbury,
of the Atlantic region, and _C. Montanum_ Douglas, of the Pacific
slope. =Leaves=, 2-several, plicate, light green, somewhat resembling
_Hellebore_ foliage, with which plants the _Cypripediums_ were early
confused by the ancient herbalists. =Roots= fleshy, fibrous, with
spicy, oily, or musk-like odor, used as a nervine. =Seed-capsule= long,
three-angled; ovules numerous, minute, resembling saw-dust. Seedlings
frequent in many stations. About 50 species for the world.
_Continental Range_—Throughout the _conifer_ wooded and bogland regions
from Alaska southward to Mexico. May-July.
North American species 13
New England species 6
Hoosac Valley species 5
New England species:
1. _C. arietinum_ R. Brown, 1813.
2. _C. reginæ_ Walter, 1788.
(_C. spectabile_ Salisbury, 1791.)
3. _C. candidum_ Willdenow, 1805.
4. _C. hirsutum_ Miller, 1768.
(_C. pubescens_ Willdenow, 1805.)
5. _C. parviflorum_ Salisbury, 1791.
6. _C. acaule_ Aiton, 1789.
[Illustration: =The Fragrant White Moccasin-Flower.= (_Cypripedium
Montanum._)
This species is a native of the Rocky Mountain region, and is closely
related to our eastern Fragrant Yellow Lady’s Slipper (_Cypripedium
parviflorum_): these two Cypripediums being the only really fragrant
species on the continent.]
1.—CYPRIPEDIUM ARIETINUM R. Brown, 1813
RAM’S-HEAD LADY’S SLIPPER—RAM’S-HEAD MOCCASIN-FLOWER
The specific name, _arietinum_, refers to the conical labellum resembling
a ram’s head.
Small _conifer_ bogland or damp woodland orchid, with fibrous roots.
Rare. May 9th-August 1st.
=Flowers=, one, terminal, mottled dull purple and white. =Labellum=
conical, ½-⅔ inch, prolonged at the apex into a reflexed spur. =Sepals=
all free. =Petals= narrow, similar in color, and assuming the place of
horns to the ram’s-head-shaped flower. =Stem= leafy, 6-12 inches high.
=Leaves=, 3-4, dark apple-green; 2-4 inches wide, smooth, without hairs.
=Seed-capsule= prominently ridged.
_Continental Range_—From Quebec, Ontario southward to North Haven,
Connecticut, and Mt. Toby, Massachusetts; westward to Minnesota, the
Great Lake region being the centre of distribution. Limited between the
40th-50th parallels.
_New England Range_—Maine, rather abundant; New Hampshire, rare; Vermont,
abundant; Massachusetts, rare; Connecticut, very rare.
2.—CYPRIPEDIUM REGINÆ Walter, 1788
(_Cypripedium spectabile_ Salisbury, 1791)
WHITE-PETALED, OR SHOWY LADY’S SLIPPER—QUEEN OF THE MOCCASIN-FLOWERS
The specific name, _reginæ_, refers to the queenly appearance of the
white-petaled flowers.