Wednesday, December 23, dawned under a damp sky. Tripyramid kept on his
nightcap, and patches of mist clung to the dark precipice of
Passaconaway. The mountains looked higher and more threatening than on
previous days, and they seemed closer to us than when the sun shone. A
whisper of falling drops and settling snow ruffled the morning calm.
Nevertheless, patches of blue sky showed in the west, and once or twice
a silvery spot in the clouds suggested the sun’s burning through. We
went first to see our favorite flock of birds at the cattle-trough in
the pasture. They were there in full force, nearly if not quite a
hundred strong. They allowed me to come within about twenty feet of
them, and to watch them narrowly through my glass. Rather more than half
were red crossbills. Of the remainder, two thirds were pine finches, and
one third goldfinches. No red-polls were to be seen. The coloring in the
crossbills was amazingly diverse. There were very brilliant males with
cinnabar tints wherever such color is ever found. From this maximum of
intensity their coloring graded downward through partial red markings on
the one hand, and through gradually fading red markings on the other. I
saw one bird with red on his rump only. The fading from red to yellow
yielded many gradations of red and yellow or orange down to pure gold.
The brown birds were the more numerous, and they seemed to have various
combinations of light and dark, with now and then suggestions of bright
tints. In some individuals the mandibles crossed in one way, and in
others the opposite way. In size the crossbills varied widely. Often, in
glancing quickly at a group, I mistook the smaller, duller birds for
pine finches. A dozen times in as many minutes the flock whirled upwards
and round and round, showering the air with their delicious medley
music. Generally from three to six old birds remained in one of the two
spruces near the fence by the trough, and a sharp call from them brought
the flock down again like a fall of hail.
When we had walked a mile up the valley a shower struck us, and we
waited a few moments under the shelter of an old house from which the
wall boards had been removed. We heard sweet bird notes, but could not
locate the singers. When we turned to go, however, a flock of sixteen
snow-buntings rose from a field where they had been feeding in the
yellow grasses, and vibrated away with merry calls until swallowed up in
fog and rain.
The wasting of the snow under the hot sun of Monday and the cloudy sky
but mild air of Tuesday had left many plants and dried flower-stalks
exposed to view. Plum-colored masses of berry bushes encroached upon the
wide expanse of snow as headlands reach out into a calm sea. Tiny
forests of wiry grass reared their heads above the snow. In color they
were what is called “sandy.” Goldenrod and aster stems, holding aloft
dry and brittle suggestions of long-lost flowers; the heads of brunella,
looking like chess castles, and of the Indian pipe, upright and
pineapple-shaped; and many delicate hairlike stems from which all trace
of leaf and flower had departed, broke the evenness of the snow fields,
and were beautiful in an unassuming, unconscious, unintentional way.
Indeed, many of them had never shone with beauty before. In summer,
submerged in the wilderness of green things which crowd the unplowed
intervale, they could not have been found by the eye of any one in
chance passing. But in winter, the time of their nominal beauty gone,
they lingered in their old age, and looked more beautiful in their
bleached simplicity than those summer flowers which never gave them a
chance to reveal what was in them.
At the end of the intervale, instead of plunging into the woods where
our barred owl lived, we turned southward towards the foot of
Passaconaway. The rough road led through the forest to a saw-mill under
the shoulder of the first ridge of the mountains. Downes Brook had been
partially dammed to form a pond, upon which hundreds of logs lay
awaiting their fate. At the foot of the dam stood the mill. Its lower
story was an engine-room. A steam-engine of considerable power worked
four saws, a planer, and an endless chain used to draw in logs from the
ice. At the dam end these logs were being drawn in upon the floor,
measured, and marked. Then they went to the first and largest saw, which
cut off their slabs, reduced them to boards or planks, and sent them
along to the second saw to have their ends squared. From the second saw
they went to the third, where their sides were made equal, and hence
through the planer, out at the lower end of the mill, down a chute to a
platform where they were piled, ready to be hauled away. The fourth saw
was used to cut the slabs and edge-cuttings into the right lengths for
fuel; for not only the engine demon in the under story fed on wood, but
all the people in the intervale burned slabs. About twelve men were
employed in the upper part of the mill, some Americans, some French
Canadians, and some Irishmen. One young Frenchman was a picture of dirty
beauty and health. His jet-black hair, reeking with oil, was plastered
in a curve over his forehead. His mustache was curling, and his snapping
eyes, dark skin, rosy cheeks, and powerful but rather gross body made a
striking picture for a day laborer.
Leaving the mill with its distracting noise, we ascended the main
logging road towards Passaconaway. It follows Downes Brook southward,
now clinging to one hillside, then crossing the ice-bound torrent by a
rude but massive bridge of spruce logs to stay for a while on the
opposite bank. On each side the timber had been cut and hauled away. The
survival of the unfittest is the rule in the forest after the lumber
thief has been through it. He leaves the crooked, the feeble, and the
diseased trees, and packs around their roots the fertilizing branches
and tops of the logs which he hauls away. On our way up we met several
teams coming down the slippery, sloppy road. Two strong Canadian horses,
low sleds, three great logs chained together and to the sleds, and an
oily, tobacco-chewing French Canadian made up a team. We stopped and
talked to one driver, who said that if the snow went off they would keep
on with their hauling, using the runners on the bare ground. While he
chatted with us he fed his nigh horse on pieces of chewing tobacco,
which the horse took from his fingers or bit from the plug. We were told
later that this is a common form of attention for the drivers to show
their favorite horses. The horse swallowed the tobacco. About half a
mile above the mill we came to the logging camp. There was a compact log
stable, a log smithy manned by a sturdy Frenchman in moccasins who spoke
very little English, and a living-house made of slabs covered with
tarred paper well battened down. The house stood on a ribbon of ground
between the road and the steep edge of the torrent. Entering through a
low shed at the southern or upper end of the shanty, we found ourselves
in the kitchen and dining-room. The room contained two cook-stoves and
three long, narrow board tables with benches facing them. The tables
were set for thirty-five men, allowing about twenty inches of space for
each man. We were welcomed by the cook, a New Englander, who boasted of
having cooked in lumber camps for twenty years. He prided himself on his
bread, and cut a loaf to show its quality. I never ate better bread
anywhere. The dishes on the table were simple,—tin plates, tin cups,
bottles of vinegar, pitchers of maple syrup, tins holding mountains of
yellow butter, and plates piled high with “fried holes,” as doughnuts
are graphically termed. Baked beans are a staple dish, but I noticed a
barrel of pork at the door, and lying on the woodpile a big bundle of
codfish and a side of beef certified as good by the Hon. Jere. Rusk.
The sleeping-room of the camp was not attractive. It was dark, hot,
stuffy in odor, and overcrowded. Rude bunks, three tiers deep, lined the
side walls. The men turn into these pens with their clothes on, often
wet with rain or snow. Teamsters are roused at four A. M.; the rest of a
“crew” somewhat later. In winter, four A. M. and midnight are equally
gloomy, and if either is colder it is the morning hour. The cook said he
could remember but one case of serious illness in his logging camps. The
grip, he said, seldom kept a man from work more than one or two days. He
expressed great fondness for birds, and spoke of the daily visits of
crossbills, and in some years of moose-birds. “They know their friends,
as most dumb beasts do,” he declared, and went on to tell of a terrible
storm of snow and sleet which came one winter, threatening death to his
pets. “I just opened my camp doors and called and whistled to my birds,
and in they came, dozens of ’em, until every beam and perch in the camp
was full of ’em.”
We strolled up the road for a mile or more beyond the camp. At several
points deposits of logs had been made at the sides of the road. Several
hundred logs lay in each pile. Near by, hemlock bark was stacked in long
rows, flanking the road. We crossed the torrent twice on spruce bridges,
and each time gained a magnificent view of Passaconaway. It was framed
in black clouds, rushing masses of vapor, and dark hillsides still laden
with forests. In the foreground was the foaming stream, boulder-choked,
bounding towards us. From this side Passaconaway shows no peak; it is
simply a somewhat worn cube, to whose precipitous faces the forests
cling and the snows freeze. Its coloring is dark in any light, but as we
saw it through the gathering storm of that late December day a more
forbidding mountain mass could hardly be imagined. It was so near us,
yet so high above us; so black, so cold, so lonely, yet so full of
nature’s voices, the wailing of wind, the cruel rush of waters, the
weird creaking of strained trees. The stream, with its greenish waters
hurling themselves over the boulders and fretting against the ice sheets
projecting from the banks, seemed like a messenger rushing headlong from
the mountain to warn us back from impending danger.
Resting for a while under the shelter of a giant hemlock, we called the
birds. Two or three chickadees and two kinglets came to us, but they
were subdued by the storm and shy about getting wet. Then we walked
briskly homeward, the rain falling in earnest during the latter part of
the way. A snowy fog rose from all parts of the valley, spreading most
rapidly from the western end. The flat fields of snow vanished first;
then the damp veil crept up the dark spruces and hid their tops; and
finally mountain peak after mountain peak surrendered to the rising
tide, and we were left alone in the dense fog with only a narrow circle
of steaming snow around us. As the day wore on, rain fell faster and
harder, the wind rose, it grew colder, and the blackness of the winter
night would have been terrible but for the peace and comfort within
doors. On such a night the deer in their “yards” must shiver with the
chilling dampness; the grouse must find the snow too wet to sleep in;
and foxes and rabbits, if they leave their dens and forms at all, must
regret the hunger which drives them out. Where are the crossbills and
siskins? I wish that I knew and could find them out, and take a friendly
look at their ruffled feathers, their heads tucked under their wings,
and perhaps dozens of their plump little bodies snuggled together in a
dark, dry spruce.