old-fashioned politeness by way of "How are you, sir?" and a little
afterward was calling earnestly from below. This is one of the
characteristic birds of the mountain, and marks well the difference
in latitude which even a slight elevation produces. I found it
nowhere in the valley country, but it was common on Lookout and on
Walden's Ridge. Then, behind me on the summit, another northern
bird, the scarlet tanager, struck up a labored, rasping, breathless
tune, hearty, but broken and forced. I say labored and breathless;
but, happily, the singer was unaware of his infirmity (or can it
be I was wrong?), and continued without interruption for at least
half an hour. If he was uncomfortably short-breathed, he was very
agreeably long-winded. Oven-birds sang at intervals throughout the
day, and once I heard again the black-billed cuckoo. Yes, Hooker was
right: Lookout Mountain is Northern, not Southern. But then, as if to
show that it is not exactly Yankee land, in spite of oven-bird and
black-bill, and notwithstanding all that Hooker and his men may have
done, a cardinal took a long turn at whistling, and a Carolina wren
came to his support with a _cheery_, _cheery_. A far-away crow was
cawing somewhere down the valley, no very common sound hereabout; a
red-eye, our great American missionary, was exhorting, of course; a
black-poll, on his way to British America, whispered something, it
was impossible to say what; and a squirrel barked. I lay so still
that a black-and-white creeper took me for a part of the boulder,
and alighted on the nearest tree-trunk. He goes round a bole just
as he sings, in corkscrew fashion. Now and then I caught some of
the louder phrases of a distant brown thrush, and once, when every
one else fell silent, a catbird burst out spasmodically with a few
halting, disjointed eccentricities, highly characteristic of a bird
who can sing like a master when he will, but who seems oftener to
enjoy talking to himself. Lizards rustled into sight with startling
suddenness; and one big fellow disappeared so instantaneously--in
"less than no time," as the Yankee phrase is--that I thought "quick
as a lizard" might well enough become an adage. Here and there I
remarked a chestnut-tree, the burs of last year still hanging;
and chestnut oaks were among the largest and handsomest trees of
the wood, as they were among the commonest. The temperature was
perfect,--so says my penciled note. Let the confession not be
overlooked, after all my railing at the fierce Tennessee sun. It made
all the pleasure of the hour, too, that there were no troublesome
insects. I had been in that country for ten days, the mercury had
been much of the time above 90°, and I had not seen ten mosquitoes.
I left my boulder at last, though it would have been good to remain
there till night, and wandered along the bluffs to the Point. Here it
was apparent at once that the wind had shifted. For the first time I
caught sight of lofty mountains in the northeast; the Great Smokies,
I was told, and could well believe it. I sat down straightway and
looked at them, and had I known how things would turn, I would
have looked at them longer; for in all my three weeks' sojourn in
Chattanooga, that was the only half-day in which the atmosphere was
even approximately clear. It was unfortunate, but I consoled myself
with the charm of the foreground,--a charm at once softened and
heightened, with something of the magic of distance, by the very
conditions that veiled the horizon and drew it closer about us.
It is truly a beautiful world that we see from Lookout Point:
the city and its suburbs; the river with its broad meanderings,
and, directly at our feet, its great Moccasin Bend; the near
mountains,--Raccoon and Sand mountains beyond Lookout Valley, and
Walden's Ridge across the river; and everywhere in the distance
hills and high mountains, range beyond range, culminating in the
Cumberland Mountains in one direction, and the Great Smokies in
another. And as we look at the fair picture we think of what was
done here,--of historic persons and historic deeds. At the foot of
the cliffs on which we stand is White House plateau, the battlefield
of Lookout Mountain. Chattanooga itself is spread out before us,
with Orchard Knob, Cameron Hill, and the national cemetery. Yonder
stretches the long line of Missionary Ridge, and farther south,
recognizable by at least one of the government towers, is the
battlefield of Chickamauga. Here, if anywhere, we may see places that
war has made sacred.
The feeling of all this is better enjoyed after one has grown
oblivious to the things which at first do so much to cheapen the
mountain,--the hotels, the photographers' shanties, the placards,
the hurrying tourists, and the general air of a place given over
to showmen. Much of this seeming desecration is unavoidable,
perhaps; at all events, it is the part of wisdom to overlook it, as,
fortunately, by the time of my third visit I was pretty well able to
do. If that proves impossible, if the visitor is of too sensitive
a temperament,--to call his weakness by no worse a name,--he can at
least betake himself to the woods, and out of them see enough, as I
did from my boulder, to repay him for all his trouble.
The battlefield, as has been said, lies at the base of the
perpendicular cliffs which make the bold northern tip of the
mountain,--Lookout Point. I must walk over it, though there is
little to see, and after a final look at the magnificent panorama I
descended the steps to the head of the "incline," or, as I should
say, the cable road. The car dropped me at a sentry-box marked
"Columbus" (it was easy to guess in what year it had been named), and
thence I strolled across the plateau,--so called in the narratives of
the battle, though it is far from level,--past the Craven house and
Cloud Fort, to the western slope looking down into Lookout Valley,
out of which the Union forces marched to the assault. The place was
peaceful enough on that pleasant May afternoon. The air was full
of music, and just below me were apple and peach orchards and a
vineyard.
In such surroundings, half wild, half tame, I had hope of finding
some strange bird; it would be pleasant to associate him with a
spot so famous. But the voices were all familiar: wood thrushes,
Carolina wrens, bluebirds, summer tanagers, catbirds, a Maryland
yellow-throat, vireos (red-eyes and white-eyes), goldfinches, a field
sparrow (the dead could want no sweeter requiem than he was chanting,
but the wood pewee should have been here also), indigo-birds, and
chats. In one of the wildest and roughest places a Kentucky warbler
started to sing, and I plunged downward among the rocks and bushes
(here was maiden-hair fern, I remember), hoping to see him. It was
only my second hearing of the song, and it would be prudent to verify
my recollection; but the music ceased, and I saw nothing. At the
turn, where the land begins to decline westward, I came to a low,
semicircular wall of earth. Here, doubtless, on that fateful November
morning, when clouds covered the mountain sides, the Confederate
troops meant to make a stand against the invader. Now a wilderness of
young blue-green persimmon-trees had sprung up about it, as about
the Craven house was a similar growth of sassafras. I had already
noticed the extreme abundance of sassafras (shrubs rather than trees)
in all this country, and especially on Missionary Ridge.
With my thoughts full of the past, while my senses kept watch of the
present, I returned slowly to the "incline," where I had five minutes
to wait for a downward car. It had been a good day, a day worth
remembering; and just then there came to my ear the new voice for
which I had been on the alert: a warbler's song, past all mistake,
sharp, thin, vivacious, in perhaps eight syllables,--a song more like
the redstart's than anything else I could think of. The singer was in
a tall tree, but by the best of luck, seeing how short my time was,
the opera-glass fell upon him almost of itself,--a hooded warbler;
my first sight of him in full dress (he might have been rigged out
for a masquerade, I thought), as it was my first hearing of his song.
If it had been also my last hearing of it, I might have written that
the hooded warbler, though a frequenter of low thickets, chooses a
lofty perch to sing from. So easy is it to generalize; that is, to
tell more than we know. The fellow sang again and again, and, to my
great satisfaction, a Kentucky joined him,--a much better singer in
all respects, and much more becomingly dressed; but I gave thanks for
both. Then the car stopped for me, and we coasted to the base, where
the customary gang of negroes, heavily chained, were repairing the
highway, while the guard, a white man, stood over them with a rifle.
It was a strange spectacle to my eyes, and suggested a considerable
postponement of the millennium; but I was glad to see the men at work.
Two days afterward (May 10), in spite of "thunder in the morning"
and one of the safest of weather saws, I made my final excursion
to Lookout, going at once to the warblers' pines. There were few
birds in them. At all events, I found few; but there is no telling
what might have happened, if the third specimen that came under my
glass--after a black-poll and a bay-breast--had not monopolized my
attention till I was driven to seek shelter. That was the day when
I needed a gun; for I suppose it must be confessed that even an
opera-glass observer, no matter how much in love he may be with his
particular method of study, and no matter how determined he may be
to stick to it, sees a time once in a great while when a bird in the
hand would be so much better than two in the bush that his fingers
fairly itch for something to shoot with. From what I know of one such
man, I am sure it would be exaggerating their tenderness of heart
to imagine observers of this kind incapable of taking a bird's life
under any circumstances. In fact, it may be partly a distrust of
their own self-restraint, under the provocations of curiosity, that
makes them eschew the use of firearms altogether.
My mystery on the present occasion was a female warbler,--of so
much I felt reasonably assured; but by what name to call her, that
was a riddle. Her upper parts were "not olive, but of a neutral
bluish gray," with light wing-bars, "not conspicuous, but distinct,"
while her lower parts were "dirty, but unstreaked." What at once
impressed me was her "bareheaded appearance" (I am quoting my
penciled memorandum), with a big eye and a light eye-ring,--like a
ruby-crowned kinglet, for which, at the first glance, I mistook her.
If my notes made mention of any dark streaks or spots underneath, I
would pluck up courage and hazard a glorious guess, to be taken for
what it might be worth. As it is, I leave guessing to men better
qualified, for whose possible edification or amusement I have set
down these particulars.
While I was pursuing the stranger, but not till I had seen her
again and again, and secured as many "points" as a longer ogling
seemed likely to afford me, it began thundering ominously out of
ugly clouds, and I edged toward some woodland cottages not far
distant. Then the big drops fell, and I took to my heels, reaching
a piazza just in time to escape a torrent against which pine-trees
and umbrella combined would have been as nothing. The lady of the
house and her three dogs received me most hospitably, and as the rain
lasted for some time we had a pleasant conversation (I can speak
for one, at least) about dogs in general and particular (a common
interest is the soul of talk); in illustration and furtherance of
which the spaniel of the party, somewhat against his will, was
induced to "sit up like a gentleman," while I boasted modestly of
another spaniel, Antony by name, who could do that and plenty of
tricks beside,--a perfect wonder of a dog, in short. Thus happily
launched, we went on to discuss the climate of Tennessee (whatever
may be the soul of talk, the weather supplies it with members and
a bodily substance) and the charms of Lookout Mountain. She lived
there the year round, she said (most of the cottagers make the place
a summer resort only), and always found it pleasant. In winter it
wasn't so cold there as down below; at any rate, it didn't feel so
cold,--which is the main thing, of course. Sometimes when she went
to the city, it seemed as if she should freeze, although she hadn't
thought of its being cold before she left home. It is one form of
patriotism, I suppose,--parochial patriotism, perhaps we may call
it,--that makes us stand up pretty stoutly for our own dwelling-place
before strangers, however we may grumble against it among ourselves.
In the present instance, however, no such qualifying explanation
seemed necessary. In general, I was quite prepared to believe that
life on a mountain top, in a cottage in a grove, would be found every
whit as agreeable as my hostess pictured it.
The rain slackened after a while, though it was long in ceasing
altogether, and I went to the nearest railway station (Sunset
Station, I believe) and waited half an hour for a train to the Point,
chatting meanwhile with the young man in charge of the relic-counter.
Then, at the Point, I waited again--this time to enjoy the prospect
and see how the weather would turn--till a train passed on "the broad
gauge" below. Just beyond Fort Cloud it ran into a fine old forest,
and a sudden notion took me to go straight down through the woods and
spend the rest of the day rambling in that direction. The weather had
still a dubious aspect, but, with motive enough, some things can be
trusted to Providence, and, the steepness of the descent accelerating
my pace, I was soon on the sleepers, after which it was but a little
way into the woods. Once there, I quickly forgot everything else at
the sound of a new song. But _was_ it new? It bore some resemblance
to the ascending scale of the blue yellow-back, and might be the
freak of some individual of that species. I stood still, and in
another minute the singer came near and sang under my eye; the very
bird I had been hoping for,--a cerulean warbler in full dress; as
Dr. Coues says, "a perfect little beauty." He continued in sight,
feeding in rather low branches,--an exception to his usual habit, I
have since found,--and sang many times over. His complaisance was a
piece of high good fortune, for I saw no second specimen. The strain
opens with two pairs of notes on the same pitch, and concludes with
an upward run much like the blue yellow-back's, or perhaps midway
between that and the prairie warbler's. So I heard it, I mean to
say. But everything depends upon the ear. Audubon speaks of it as
"extremely sweet and mellow" (the last a surprising word), while Mr.
Ridgway is quoted as saying that the bird possesses "only the most
feeble notes."
The woods of themselves were well worth a visit: extremely open, with
broad barren spaces; the trees tall, largely oak,--chestnut oak,
especially,--but with chestnut, hickory, tupelo, and other trees
intermingled. Here, as afterward on Walden's Ridge, I was struck
with the almost total absence of mosses, and the dry, stony character
of the soil,--a novel and not altogether pleasing feature in the eyes
of a man accustomed to the mountain forests of New England, where
mosses cover every boulder, stump, and fallen log, while the feet
sink into sphagnum as into the softest of carpets.
Comfortable lounging-places continually invited me to linger, and at
last I sat down under a chestnut oak, with a big broken-barked tupelo
directly before me. Over the top of a neighboring boulder a lizard
leaned in a praying attitude and gazed upon the intruder. Once in a
while some loud-voiced tree-frog, as I suppose, uttered a grating
cry. A blue-gray gnatcatcher was complaining,--snarling, I might have
said; a red-eye, an indigo-bird, a field sparrow, and a Carolina wren
took turns in singing; and a sudden chat threw himself into the air,
quite unannounced, and, with ludicrous teetering motions, flew into
the tupelo and eyed me saucily. A few minutes later, a single cicada
(seventeen-year locust) followed him. With my glass I could see its
monstrous red eyes and the orange edge of its wing. It kept silence;
but without a moment's cessation the musical hum of distant millions
like it filled the air,--a noise inconceivable.
I would gladly have sat longer, as I would gladly have gone much
farther into the woods, for I had seen none more attractive;
but a rumbling of thunder, a rapid blackening of the sky, and a
recollection of the forenoon's deluge warned me to turn back. And
now, for the first time, although I had been living within sound of
locusts for a week or more, I suddenly came to trees in which they
were congregated. The branches were full of them. Heard thus near,
the sound was no longer melodious, but harsh and shrill.
It seemed cruel that my last day on Lookout Mountain should be so
broken up, and so abruptly and unseasonably concluded, but so the
Fates willed it. My retreat became a rout, and of the remainder of
the road I remember only the hurry and the warmth, and two pleasant
things,--a few wild roses, and the scent of a grapevine in bloom; two
things so sweet and homelike that they could be caught and retained
by a man on the run.
CHICKAMAUGA.
The field of Chickamauga--a worthily resounding name for one of
the great battlefields of the world--lies a few miles south of the
Tennessee and Georgia boundary, and is distant about an hour's ride
by rail from Chattanooga. A single morning train outward, and a
single evening train inward, made an all-day excursion necessary, and
the time proved to be none too long. Unhappily, as I then thought,
the sun was implacable, with the mercury in the nineties, though
it was only the 3d of May; and as I was on foot, and the national
reservation covers nine or ten square miles, I saw hardly more
than a corner of the field. This would have been a more serious
disappointment had my errand been of a topographical or historical
nature. As the case was, being only a sentimental pilgrim, I ought
perhaps to have welcomed the burning heat as a circumstance all in
my favor; suiting the spirit of the place, and constraining me to a
needful moderation. When a man goes in search of a mood, he must
go neither too fast nor too far. As the Scripture saith, "Bodily
exercise profiteth little." So much may readily be confessed now; for
wisdom comes with reflection, and it is no great matter to bear a
last year's toothache.
From the railway station I followed, at a venture, a road that soon
brought me to a comfortable, homelike house, with fine shade trees
and an orchard. This was the Dyer estate,--so a tablet informed all
comers. Here, in September, 1863, lived John Dyer, who suddenly
found his few peaceful acres surrounded and overrun by a hundred
thousand armed men, and himself drafted into service--if he needed
drafting--as guide to the Confederate commander. Since then strange
things had happened to the little farmhouse, which now was nothing
less than a sort of government headquarters, as I rightly inferred
from the general aspect of things round about, and the American flag
flying above the roof. I passed the place without entering, halting
only to smile at the antics of a white-breasted nuthatch,--my first
Tennessee specimen,--which was hopping awkwardly about the yard.
It was a question of something to eat, I suppose, or perhaps of a
feather for the family nest, and precedents and appearances went for
nothing. Two or three minutes afterward I came face to face with
another apparition, a horseman as graceful and dignified, not to say
majestic, as the nuthatch had been lumbering and ungainly; a man in
civilian's dress, but visibly a soldier, with a pose and carriage
that made shoulder-straps superfluous; a man to look at; every inch
a major-general, at the very least; of whom, nevertheless,--the heat
or something else giving me courage,--I ventured to inquire, from
under my umbrella, if there were any way of seeing some of the more
interesting portions of the battlefield without too much exposure
to the sun. He showed a little surprise (military gentlemen always
do, so far as I have observed, when strangers address them), but
recovered himself, and answered almost with affability. Yes, he said,
if I would take the first turn to the left, I should pass the spot
over which Longstreet made the charge that decided the fate of the
contest, and as he spoke he pointed out the field, which appeared to
be part of the Dyer farm; then I should presently come within sight
of the Kelly house, about which the fighting was of the hottest; and
from there I should do well to go to the Snodgrass Hill tower and the
Snodgrass house. To do as much as that would require little walking,
and at the same time I should have seen a good share of what was best
worth a visitor's notice. I thanked him, and followed his advice.
The left-hand road, of which my informant had spoken, ran between
the forest--mostly of tall oaks and long-leaved pines--and the
grassy Dyer field. Here it was possible to keep in the shade, and
life was comparatively easy; so that I felt no stirrings of envious
desire when two gentlemen, whom I recognized as having been among my
fellow-passengers from Chattanooga, came up behind me in a carriage
with a pair of horses and a driver. As they overtook me, and while
I was wondering where they could have procured so luxurious a
turnout, since I had discovered no sign of a public conveyance or a
livery stable, the driver reined in his horses, and the older of the
gentlemen put out his head to ask, "Were you in the battle, sir?" I
answered in the negative; and he added, half apologetically, that he
and his companion wished to get as many points as possible about the
field. In the kindness of my heart, I told him that I was a stranger,
like himself, but that the gentleman yonder, on horseback, seemed
to be well acquainted with the place, and would no doubt answer all
inquiries. With a queer look in his face, and some remark that I
failed to catch, my interlocutor dropped back into his seat, and the
carriage drove on. It was only afterward that I learned--on meeting
him again--that he was no other than General Boynton, the man who is
at the head of all things pertaining to Chickamauga and its history.
In the open field several Bachman finches were singing, while the
woods were noisier, but less musical, with Maryland yellow-throats,
black-poll warblers, tufted titmice, and two sorts of vireos.
Sprinkled over the ground were the lovely spring beauty and the
violet wood sorrel, with pentstemon, houstonia, and a cheerful pink
phlox. Here I soon heard a second nuthatch, and fell into a kind of
fever about its notes, which were clearer, less nasal, than those of
our New England birds, it seemed to me, and differently phrased.
Such peculiarities might indicate a local race, I said to myself,
with that predisposition to surprise which is one of the chief
compensations of life away from home. As I went on, a wood pewee and
a field sparrow began singing,--two birds whose voices might have
been tuned on purpose for such a place. Of the petulant, snappish cry
of an Acadian flycatcher not quite the same could be said. One of the
"unreconstructed," I was tempted to call him.
The Kelly house, on the way to which through the woods my Yankee
eyes were delighted with the sight of loose patches of rue anemones,
was duly marked with a tablet, and proved to be a cabin of the
most primitive type, standing in the usual bit of fenced land (the
smallness of the houseyards, as contrasted with the miles of open
country round about, is a noticeable feature of Southern landscapes),
with a corn-house near by, and a tumble-down barn across the way.
For some time I sat beside the road, under an oak; then, seeing two
women, older and younger, inside the house, I asked leave to enter,
the doors being open, and was made welcome with apparent heartiness.
The elderly woman soon confided to me that she was seventy-six years
old,--a marvelous figure she seemed to consider it; and when I
tried to say something about her comparative youthfulness, and the
much greater age of some ladies of my acquaintance (no names being
mentioned, of course), she would only repeat that she was awful
old, and shouldn't live much longer. She meant to improve the time,
however,--and the unusual fortune of a visitor,--and fairly ran over
with talk. She didn't belong about here. Oh no; she came from "'way
up in Tennessee, a hundred and sixty miles!" "'Pears like I'm a long
way from home," she said,--"a hundred and sixty miles!" Again I
sought to comfort her. That wasn't so very far. What did she think
of me, who had come all the way from Massachusetts? She threw up her
hands, and ejaculated, "Oh, Lor'!" with a fervor to which a regiment
of exclamation points would scarcely do justice. Yet she had but a
vague idea of where Massachusetts was, I fancy; for pretty soon she
asked, "Where did you say you was from? Pennsylvany?" And when I
said, "Oh no, Massachusetts, twice as far as that," she could only
repeat, "Oh, Lor'!" Her grandson was at work in the park, and she had
come down to live with him and his wife. But she shouldn't live long.
The wonder of this new world was still strong upon her. "Them
moniment things they've put up," she said, "have you seen 'em? Men
cut in a rock!--three of 'em? Have you seen 'em? Ain't they a sight
to see?" She referred to the granite monuments of the regulars, on
which are life-size figures in high relief. And had I seen the tower
on the hill, she proceeded to ask,--an open iron structure,--and
what did I think of _that_? She wouldn't go up in it for a bushel
of money. "Oh yes, you would," I told her. "You would like it, I'm
sure." But she stuck to her story. She wouldn't do it for a bushel of
money. She should be dizzy; and she threw up her hands, literally, at
the very thought, while her granddaughter sat and smiled at my waste
of breath. I asked if many visitors came here. "Oh, Lor', yes!" the
old lady answered. "More'n two dozen have been here from 'way up in
Chicago."
The mention of visitors led the younger woman to produce a box of
relics, and I paid her a dime for three minie-balls. "I always get
a nickel," she said, when I inquired the price; but when I selected
two, and handed her a ten-cent piece, she insisted upon my taking
another. Wholesale customers deserved handsome treatment. She had
picked up such things herself before now, but her husband found most
of them while grubbing in the woods.