Dear birds, an easy life was yours
E’er man, the slayer, trod
Your earth from all its seas and shores
Went up your praise to God.
What though to weasel, stoat and fox
Your toll of lives you paid,
And hungry hawks might tithe your flocks
That through the woodland play’d?
Short fears were yours and sudden death,
Long life and boundless room;
No cities choked you with their breath,
Or scared you with their gloom.
Pure streams and quiet vales you had;
No snare nor line nor gun
Made war against your legions glad
That wanton’d in the sun.
Hope on, and some day you shall see,
When these ill days have end,
That man the slayer—who but he?—
Is changed to man, the friend.
—Henry Johnstone.
OLD-FASHIONED OUTINGS.
PART I.
The western shore of Gloucester harbor rises in a succession of wooded
ridges from the sea-rocks, which redden westward to a degree fully
bearing out the sketching-books in the statement that rocks are among
the most highly colored of objects.—A sketch is brought home.—“Your
rocks are too red.” “Too red!” exclaims the aggrieved sketcher, “they
aren’t half red enough. They fairly blazed!” These rocks abound in
chasms where trap-dikes have worn away; and when some trap is left, the
contrast in color is very striking, but the main charm of this shore is
the intimate association of woods with rocks and water. Next the rocks,
as a rule, on high knolls and hedges thinly veiled with a dry, light
soil stand the pitch pines, those gnarled and fragrant dwarfs with their
stout prickly needles and prevailing shape of a double umbrella. Under
favorable circumstances these grow quite tall. The Lone Pine, standing
in a low, moist place near the mouth of a creek, attained a height of
thirty or forty feet, and its characteristic, interesting shape was long
a landmark on that shore. Great was the sorrow when it fell. Fortunately
a portrait of it still exists.
The white pines stand back from the water on their great purple trunks,
and rain their rust-red needles down among the purple bowlders of
exactly the same shade, which encumber lowland and hillside, while
trunks and bowlders are alike besprinkled with lichens of palest green.
Some giants used to shade the new road where it passes the Red Brook;
and the perfect level, deep shadow and general dampness somehow recalled
the Wood at the Hague, although that is beech forest. Oaks clothe the
more easterly ridges or stand alone in open pastures near the shore, but
the present tendency of fields which have lain open since our infancy to
grow up to woodland in the last half-dozen years is deplored if not
resented.
A ruined stone wall with a hedge-row running down toward the water
divides two dear familiar fields bounded by woodland on either hand, and
in the row once stood alone a delightful white pine with double crown.
Through these fields we pass on our way to certain parts of the shore,
and we always had a view of rocky headland, white sails and dancing
water, over a sloping foreground dotted with fern and yellow St. John’s
wort or golden-rod and asters, according to season, while we paused to
pick blue curls and Nuttall’s polygala or spiranthus and little purple
gerardia. At present that stylish pine is all mixed up with dowdy maples
and poplars, the water view is completely blocked, and we wedge our way
with difficulty where we once stepped freely along a tiny track beaten
hard in the thin sunburnt pasture grass, running diagonally to a breach
in the wall flanked by barberries, and out into the big field which,
dipping suddenly to the level of the beach, becomes a grassy swamp. Half
way down stands a magnificent pitch pine of most luxuriant growth and
very peculiar shape, quite tall, yet stretching one broad curving arm
down the slope close to the ground, like a great delicious tufted green
mattress. The path, bearing a little to the right, comes out on the
beach, while beyond the swamp the land rises in quite a high
“hog-backed” hill, of which, after a very considerable dip on the
outside, enough is left to form a very bold shore.
Ah, what a view! two views, in fact, from that outpost, the inland slope
of that hill eastward, up the harbor, over a bold headland clothed all
but the crown in oak woods, beautiful background to a pretty cove beyond
the sloping pasture; and westward past the Rock, along the wooded shore
of Norman’s Woe to the cliffs at Rafe’s Chasm and the sunset. One fairy
sunset there was never matched anywhere in my experience, the sky one
dome of soft luminous pink, the sea another sky, the earth translucent
floating between, like the firmament that divided the waters.
A little way back from that shore ran in our day over hill, dale and
brook an old grass-grown road, by each brook a ruined cellar, reputed
trace of Acadian dwelling. The hills are among the sharpest little
pitches ever seen. Driving at our ease about New England nowadays, we
are fain to exclaim: Of a truth our forefathers would seem to have
climbed hills by preference (and laid stone walls for exercise). But
swamps were their horror, and the poor creatures had to thread their way
through mazes of them. There can be no doubt that these wet areas are
much restricted now, leaving us but a faint idea of ancestral
difficulties in this regard; but even up to our time grandmothers told
awe-struck children fragments of half-forgotten stories of the horrors
of the swamps. Ours told of an already nameless young soldier, perhaps
in the Great Swamp Fight, who, sinking slowly before the eyes of his
comrades, pushed his watch to them over the bog, bidding them take it
back to his mother. How it was they could do nothing to help him, did
not appear.
The Magnolia Swamp lies north of the ridges, and some magnolia trees
grow in an arm of it more accessible than the rest. Long before you
reach a tree the dead swamp air is redeemed by their fresh fragrance if
any flowers are in bloom; and redeemed is well said; for the swamp-air
of the dog days is rendered doubly oppressive by millions of stiff white
spikes borne by the obnoxious clethra in odor “overbearin’ and
upsettin’,”—as Aunt Semantha said widders were in temper. You enter over
turf wherein remain divers small deep swamp-holes surrounded by crimson
calopogon, yellow-eyed grass, white cotton-grass and the pretty little
yellow-horned bladder root. Further in, the path becomes miry, and you
have to put aside the long swaying wands of the swamp loosestrife with
its whorls of magenta bloom, and catch at the shrubs to keep you out of
the mud. (At this point the poison sumach officiously tenders aid), but
the path to your goal, the magnolia tree, leads aside into the bush
where the footing is perfectly hard and peculiarly flat; and it doesn’t
exactly quake and doesn’t exactly sound hollow, yet something tells you
the bog is beneath, and you are walking on a crust.
To return to the old road: it forded two brooks, the Red Brook which
runs into the sea behind Norman’s Woe Rock, and the White Brook which
runs out (amid much ivy) over the rocky beach by the Dry Chasm. The Red
Brook must have been much bigger formerly, for it turned a saw-mill
before 1700, and the ruined dam is still to be seen a little way below
the ford, where it serves as a bridge. This brook is charged with
coloring-matter from the swamps, so that it lines your tin cup with gold
(if you chance to have “escaped from the Bastille of civilization”), and
it furnishes the most unsatisfying draught ever swallowed. Not a drop
ever seems to go lower than your collar-button. It makes one thirsty to
think of it. But it was lovely to look at! It ran out of a great bed of
cardinal, jewel-weed and raspberry-bushes (which bore monstrous berries
because they stood with their feet in the water) and spread out in a big
red pool at the foot of a gentle dip in the grassy road; and from the
upper level you looked over the brook at a preternaturally steep little
pitch beyond, where the road climbed a pine-clad hill, bowing out to the
very verge of the dark descent to a ferny swamp, cradle of the brook.
The dark background was faced with bright growth, and all in the light
of sweet summer mornings with water sparkling in the bay and in the
brook! Above, the road turned sharply, broadening into a level glade set
round with barberry-bushes, door-yard of a vanished dwelling, and then
turned another corner round the cellar and away. This was a cherished
haunt. A little sidelong, slippery path, parallel with the brook led
down a rugged slope of pine and cedar to a little bluff behind Norman’s
Woe Rock.
Here we camped out before that way of life became general, except for
Uncle Sam. He had just been camping out on a large scale, and so it
chanced that two large round tents and sundry new rubber blankets came
our way and did not go a-begging. The Red Brook filled our kettles in a
shady little glen with sides so steep we had to lower and raise
ourselves by the trees, and then it ran away and spread out over the
sea-rocks in a series of big, shallow basins—a famous dressing-room—but
the way to it was of the roughest, for the red rock scaled off, and
literally cut the soles from our boots.
The summer of 1865 was very dry, and so was the brook in many places.
Therefore we slept in peace in our tents; but the next year the
mosquitoes fairly drove us out, and we were fain to betake ourselves and
our bed-sacks down that jagged path to the rocks just above high-water
mark where the mosquitoes left us alone until four o’clock. Then they
descended in force, and we had to get up. The crows wanted us to get up
at three, at which unseemly hour they used to be discussing mussels at
the other end of the rough bar between us and the Rock. We, on the other
hand, held that meals attended with clamor, especially at such an hour,
were “tolerable and not to be endured,” and so arose one of those
painful differences not uncommon between neighbors who cannot sympathize
with each other’s needs. Remonstrance growing vain, one of the family
employed a rifle; a convincing argument apparently, for the sitting
dissolved instantly, and gathered no more.
Having learned the constellations at school, we had been poking our
heads out of window at all hours to see things that were not up when we
went to bed; and we thought it would now be very convenient to observe
these matters from our beds without stirring, but we never did. Dear
Robert Louis in the course of his donkey-drive averred, on the authority
of shepherds and old folk, that “to the man who sleeps afield—there is
one stirring hour—when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping
hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet.” But we knew
nothing of it, perhaps because we never went to bed with the fowls, and
had no cows or sheep to browse around us. At all events—and we were
really disappointed—that starry show was thrown away on us. Nobody ever
woke.
But we woke one morning in a thick fog, with the Boston boat shouting
its way out past us, and water standing in the dimples in our blankets
enough to wash our faces very passably if we had had no better chance.
When the sun broke through, some one faced it and struck up:
“When the sun gloriously—”
and the rest, like so many troop-horses, bounded and stood in
choir-order and went on:
—“comes forth from the ocean,
Making earth glorious, chasing shadows away,
Then do we offer Thee our prayer of devotion:
God of the fatherless, guide us, guard us today.”
The other verse we sometimes sang at sunset, undaunted in our heyday by
its melancholy tone, and then we piled a big fire of the fragrant red
cedar to light our supper table and our evening. Pretty silver-mounted
trinkets cut from the rich heart of this thenceforth precious wood, and
polished on the spot, are still in being, ready, as our camp-laureate
had it,
“To sing in praise
Of summer days
In camp at Norman’s Woe.”
—Helen Mansfield.
[Illustration: ALICE’S THRUSH.
(Turdus aliciae).
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.]
THE ALICE’S THRUSH.
(_Turdus aliciae._)
Alice’s Thrush, or the Gray-cheeked Thrush, has an extensive range
covering the whole of North America from the Atlantic coast westward to
the Plains and northward to the regions beyond the Arctic Circle and is
abundant along the Arctic Coast. Mr. Ridgway says: “This bird and the
robin are the only species of our thrushes that cross the Arctic Circle
to any distance, or reach the shores of the Arctic Ocean. It occurs from
Labrador all around the American Coast to the Aleutian Islands.” It also
frequents Siberia. From its breeding grounds in northern North America,
on the approach of winter, it migrates southward to Central America, and
finally reaches Costa Rica.
Alice’s Thrush closely resembles the olive-backed thrush with which it
is frequently associated during its migrations. When thus associated,
only the trained eye of an expert can discriminate between them. The two
may be distinguished, however, by the much stronger buff coloring on the
throat and breast, and on the sides of the head around the eyes, of the
olive-backed species.
Alice’s Thrush is a shy bird during the nesting period and remains
within the friendly shelter of thickets and though unseen “their low
sweet song is frequently heard.” Mr. Ridgway says: “The notes are said
to be quite distinctive, the song being most like that of the hermit
thrush, ‘but differs in being its exact inverse,’ beginning with its
highest and concluding with its lowest notes, instead of the reverse.”
However, when their family cares are over, their retiring nature
disappears to a great extent and they seem to seek a closer association
with the habitation of man and frequent more open places in the vicinity
of villages. In his report on “The Birds of Alaska,” Mr. E. W. Nelson
says that during the period following the breeding season and before the
migration begins, “many are killed by the native boys, armed with their
bows and arrows. Their skins are removed and hung in rows or bunches to
dry in the smoky huts and are preserved as trophies of the young
hunter’s prowess. In the winter festivals, when the older hunters bring
out the trophies of their skill, the boys proudly display the skins of
these thrushes and hang them alongside.”
So closely does this bird resemble some of its sister thrushes that it
was not until the year 1858 that its distinctive characteristics were
recognized and it was given a name of its own. In that year it was
described from specimens collected in southern Illinois by the eminent
naturalist Robert Kennicott and his sister Alice.
For many years it was considered a rare bird, for in its typical form it
is only a migrant in the United States, silently winging its way through
the forests to and from its summer home.
Its nests are usually placed in shrubs or low branching trees at a
height of but two to seven feet from the ground and in a few instances
it has been known to nest on the ground. The nest is usually compact and
“composed of an elaborate interweaving of fine sedges, leaves, stems,
dry grasses, strips of fine bark and lined with fine grass. Occasionally
nests are constructed with mud, like those of the common robin.” It is
said that this thrush will easily modify its nesting habits to suit the
requirements of its environment. In the land of the deer, nests have
been found that were wholly constructed of hair and lined with the hair
of deer, feathers and some moss.
In our illustration is shown its habit of scratching away the dead
leaves that accumulate under the trees, in its search for grubs and
worms.