of days, and with it a new idea of this mountain world; where the
visitor finds hills and valleys, creeks and waterfalls, the most
beautiful of forests, with clearings, isolated cabins, straggling
settlements, orchards, and gardens, and where he forgets again and
again that he is on a mountain at all. Even now I had seen but
a corner of it, as I have seen but a corner of the larger world
on which, for these few years back, I have had what I call my
existence. And even of what I saw, much has gone undescribed: stately
tulip-trees deep in the forest, with humming-birds darting from
flower to flower among them; the flame-colored azalea; the ground
flowers of the woods, including some tiny yellow lady's-slippers,
too dainty for the foot of Cinderella herself; the road to Sawyer's
Springs; and numbers of birds, whose names, even, I have omitted. It
was a wonderful world; but if the hobbyist may take the pen for a
single sentence, it may stand confessed that the greatest wonder of
all was this,--that in all those miles of oak forest I found not one
blue jay.
Another surprising circumstance, which I do not remember to have
noticed, however, till my attention was somewhat rudely called
to it, was the absence of colored people. With the exception of
three servants at the hotel, I saw none but whites. Walden's Ridge,
although stanchly Union in war-time, and largely Republican now, as
I was told, is a white man's country. I had gone to bed one night,
and was fast asleep, when I was wakened suddenly by the noise of some
one hurrying up the stairs and shouting, "Where's the gun? Where's
the gun? Shorty's been shot!" "Shorty" was the colored waiter, and
the speaker was a general factotum, an English boy. The colored
people--Shorty, his wife, and the cook--had been out on the edge of
the woods behind the house, when three men had fired at them, or
pretended to do so. It was explained the next morning that this was
only an attempt (on the part of some irresponsible young men, as the
older residents said) to "run the niggers off the mountain,"--after
what I understood to be a somewhat regular custom. "Niggers" did not
belong there; their place was down below. If a Chattanooga cottager
brought up a colored servant, he was "respectfully requested" to
send him back, and save the natives the trouble of attending to the
matter. In short, the Ridgites appeared to look upon "niggers" as
Northern laborers look upon non-union men--"scabs."
The hotel-keeper, an Englishman, with an Englishman's notions about
personal rights, was naturally indignant. He would hire his own
servants, or he would shut the house. In any event, the presence of
"Whitecaps," real or imaginary, must affect his summer patronage.
I fully expected to see the colored trio pack up and go back to
Chattanooga, without waiting for further hints; but they showed no
disposition to do anything of the sort, and, I must add, rose in my
estimation accordingly.
Of the feeling of the community I had a slight but ludicrous
intimation a day or two after the shooting. I passed a boy whom I had
noticed in the road, some days before, playing with a pig, lifting
him by the hind legs and pitching him over forwards. "He can turn a
somerset good," he had said to me, as I passed. Now, for the sake of
being neighborly, I asked, "How's the pig to-day?" He smiled, and
made some reply, as if he appreciated the pleasantry; but a more
serious-looking playmate took up his parable, and said, "The pig'll
be all right, if the folks up at the hotel don't shoot him." His tone
and look were intended to be deeply significant. "Oh, I know you,"
they implied: "you are up at the hotel, where they threaten to shoot
white folks."
For my last afternoon--wars and rumors of wars long since
forgotten--I went to the place that had pleased me first, the valley
of Falling Water Creek. The cross-vine on the dead hemlock had by
this time dropped the greater part of its bells, but even yet many
were hanging from the uppermost branches. The rhododendron was still
at the height of its splendor. All the gardens were nothing to it,
I said to myself. Crossing the creek on the log, and the branch on
stepping-stones, I went to quench my thirst at the Marshall Spring,
which once had a cabin beside it, and frequent visitors, but now was
clogged with fallen leaves and seemingly abandoned. It was perhaps
more beautiful so. Directly behind it rose a steep bank, and in front
stood an oak and a maple, the latter leaning toward it and forming
a pointed arch,--a worthy entrance. Mossy stones walled it in, and
ferns grew luxuriantly about it. Just over them, an azalea still
held two fresh pink flowers, the last till another May. In such a
spot it would have been easy to grow sentimental; but there came a
rumbling of thunder, the sky darkened, and, with a final hasty look
about me, I picked up my umbrella and started homeward.
My last walk had ended like many others in that showery, fragmentary
week. But what is bad weather when the time is past? All those black
clouds have left no shadow on Walden's Ridge, and the best of all my
strolls beside Falling Water, a stroll not yet finished,
"The calm sense of seen beauty without sight,"
suffers no harm. As Thoreau says, "It is after we get home that we
really go over the mountain."
FOOTNOTE:
[2] It was _not_ the top of the mountain; so I am now informed, on
the best of authority. I followed the map, but misunderstood the man
who drew it. It was a map of some other route, and I did not see the
top of the mountain, after all.
SOME TENNESSEE BIRD NOTES.
Whoever loves the music of English sparrows should live in
Chattanooga; there is no place on the planet, it is to be hoped,
where they are more numerous and pervasive. Mocking-birds are scarce.
To the best of my recollection, I saw none in the city itself,
and less than half a dozen in the surrounding country. A young
gentleman whom I questioned upon the subject told me that they used
to be common, and attributed their present increasing rarity to the
persecution of boys, who find a profit in selling the young into
captivity. Their place, in the city especially, is taken by catbirds;
interesting, imitative, and in their own measure tuneful, but poor
substitutes for mocking-birds. In fact, that is a rôle which it is
impossible to think of any bird as really filling. The brown thrush,
it is true, sings quite in the mocking-bird's manner, and, to my
ear, almost or quite as well; but he possesses no gift as a mimic,
and furthermore, without being exactly a bird of the forest or the
wilderness, is instinctively and irreclaimably a recluse. It would
be hard, even among human beings, to find a nature less touched with
urbanity. In the mocking-bird the elements are more happily mingled.
Not gregarious, intolerant of rivalry, and, as far as creatures of
his own kind are concerned, a stickler for elbow-room,--sharing with
his brown relative in that respect,--he is at the same time a born
citizen and neighbor; as fond of gardens and dooryard trees as the
thrasher is of scrublands and barberry bushes. "Man delights me," he
might say, "and woman also." He likes to be listened to, it is pretty
certain; and possibly he is dimly aware of the artistic value of
appreciation, without which no artist ever did his best. Add to this
endearing social quality the splendor and freedom of the mocker's
vocal performances, multifarious, sensational, incomparable, by turns
entrancing and amusing, and it is easy to understand how he has come
to hold a place by himself in Southern sentiment and literature.
A city without mocking-birds is only half Southern, though black
faces be never so thick upon the sidewalks and mules never so common
in the streets. If the boys have driven the great mimic away from
Chattanooga, it is time the fathers took the boys in hand. Civic
pride alone ought to bring this about, to say nothing of the possible
effect upon real estate values of the abundant and familiar presence
of this world-renowned, town-loving, town-charming songster.
From my window, on the side of Cameron Hill, I heard daily the
singing of an orchard oriole--another fine and neighborly bird--and
a golden warbler, with sometimes the _fidgety_, _fidgety_ of a
Maryland yellow-throat. What could _he_ be fussing about in so
unlikely a quarter? An adjoining yard presented the unnatural
spectacle--unnatural, but, I am sorry to say, not unprecedented--of
a bird-house occupied in partnership by purple martins and English
sparrows. They had finished their quarrels, if they had ever had
any,--which can hardly be open to doubt, both native and foreigner
being constitutionally belligerent,--and frequently sat side by side
upon the ridge-pole, like the best of friends. The oftener I saw
them there, the more indignant I became at the martins' un-American
behavior. Such a disgraceful surrender of the Monroe Doctrine was too
much even for a man of peace. I have never called myself a Jingo, but
for once it would have done me good to see the lion's tail twisted.
With the exception of a few pairs of rough-wings on Missionary
Ridge, the martins seemed to be the only swallows in the country
at that time of the year; and though _Progne subis_, in spite of
an occasional excess of good nature, is a most noble bird, it was
impossible not to feel that by itself it constituted but a meagre
representation of an entire family. Swallows are none too numerous in
Massachusetts, in these days, and are pretty certainly growing fewer
and fewer, what with the prevalence of the box-monopolizing European
sparrow, and the passing of the big, old-fashioned, widely ventilated
barn; for there is no member of the family, not even the sand martin,
whose distribution does not depend in great degree upon human agency.
Even yet, however, if a Massachusetts man will make a circuit of a
few miles, he will usually meet with tree swallows, barn swallows,
cliff swallows, sand martins, and purple martins. In other words, he
need not go far to find all the species of eastern North America,
with the single exception of the least attractive of the six; that
is to say, the rough-wing. As compared with the people of eastern
Tennessee, then, we are still pretty well favored. It is worth while
to travel now and then, if only to find ourselves better off at home.
It might be easy to suggest plausible reasons for the general
absence of swallows from a country like that about Chattanooga;
but the extraordinary scarcity of hawks, while many persons--not
ornithologists--would account it less of a calamity, is more of a
puzzle. From Walden's Ridge I saw a single sparrow hawk and a single
red-tail; in addition to which I remember three birds whose identity
I could not determine. Five hawks in the course of three weeks spent
entirely out of doors, in the neighborhood of mountains covered
with old forest! Taken by itself, this unexpected showing might
have been ascribed to some queer combination of accidents, or to a
failure of observation. In fact, I was inclined so to explain it
till I noticed that Mr. Brewster had chronicled a similar state of
things in what is substantially the same piece of country. Writing
of western North Carolina, he says:[3] "The general scarcity--one
may almost say absence--of hawks in this region during the breeding
season is simply unaccountable. Small birds and mammals, lizards,
snakes, and other animals upon which the various species subsist are
everywhere numerous, the country is wild and heavily forested, and,
in short, all the necessary conditions of environment seem to be
fulfilled." Certainly, so far as my ingenuity goes, the mystery is
"unaccountable;" but of course, like every other mystery, it would
open quickly enough if we could find the key.
Turkey vultures were moderately numerous,--much less abundant than
in Florida,--and twice I saw a single black vulture, recognizable,
almost as far as it could be seen (but I do not mean at a first
glance, nor without due precaution against foreshortened effects),
by its docked tail. Both are invaluable in their place,--useful,
graceful, admirable, and disgusting. The vultures, the martins, and
the swifts were the only common aerial birds. The swifts, happily,
were everywhere,--jovial souls in a sooty dress,--and had already
begun nest-building. I saw them continually pulling up against the
twigs of a partially dead tree near my window. In them nature has
developed the bird idea to its extreme,--a pair of wings, with just
body enough for ballast; like a racing-yacht, built for nothing but
to carry sail and avoid resistance. Their flight is a good visual
music, as Emerson might have said; but I love also their quick,
eager notes, like the sounds of children at play. And while it has
nothing to do with Tennessee, I am prompted to mention here a bird
of this species that I once saw in northern New Hampshire on the 1st
of October,--an extraordinarily late date, if my experience counts
for anything. With a friend I had made an ascent of Mount Lafayette
(one of the days of a man's life), and as we came near the Profile
House, on our return to the valley, there passed overhead a single
chimney swift. What he could be doing there at that season was more
than either of us could divine. It was impossible to feel any great
concern about him, however. The afternoon was nearly done, but at the
rate he was traveling it seemed as if he might be in Mexico before
sunrise. And easily enough he may have been, if Mr. Gätke is right in
his contention that birds of very moderate powers of wing are capable
of flying all night at the rate of four miles a minute!
The comparative scarcity of crows about Chattanooga, and the amazing
dearth of jays in the oak forest of Walden's Ridge, have been touched
upon elsewhere. As for the jays, their absence must have been more
apparent than real, I am bound to believe. It was their silent time,
probably. Still another thing that I found surprising was the small
number of woodpeckers. For the first four days I saw not a single
representative of the family. It would be next to impossible to be
so much out of doors in Massachusetts at any season of the year
with a like result. During my three weeks in Tennessee I saw eight
flickers, seven hairy woodpeckers, two red-heads, and two or three
red-cockaded woodpeckers, besides which I heard one downy and one
"logcock." The last-named bird, which is big enough for even the
careless to notice, seemed to be well known to the inhabitants of
Walden's Ridge, where I heard it. By what they told me, it should be
fairly common, but I saw nothing of its "peck-holes." The first of
my two red-headed woodpeckers was near the base of Missionary Ridge,
wasting his time in exploring pole after pole along the railway. Did
he mistake them for so many dead trees still standing on their own
roots? Dry and seemingly undecayed, they appeared to me to offer
small encouragement to a grub-seeker; but probably the fellow knew
his own business best. On questions of economic entomology, I fear
I should prove but a lame adviser for the most benighted woodpecker
that ever drummed. And yet, being a man, I could not help feeling
that this particular red-head was behaving uncommonly like a fool.
Was there ever a man who did not take it as a matter of course that
he should be wiser than the "lower animals"?
Humming-birds cut but a small figure in my daily notes till I
went to Walden's Ridge. There, in the forest, they were noticeably
abundant,--for humming-birds, that is to say. It seemed to be the
time of pairing with them; more than once the two sexes were seen
together,--an unusual occurrence, unless my observation has been
unfortunate, after the nest is built, or even while it is building.
One female piqued my curiosity by returning again and again to the
bole of an oak, hovering before it as before a flower, and more
than once clinging to its rough upright surface. At first I took it
for granted that she was picking off bits of lichen with which to
embellish the outer wall of her nest; but after each browsing she
alighted here or there on a leafless twig. If she had been gathering
nest material, she would have flown away with it, I thought.
At another time, in a tangle of shrubbery, I witnessed a most
lively encounter between two humming-birds; a case of fighting or
love-making,--two things confusingly alike to an outsider,--in the
midst of which one of the contestants suddenly displayed so dazzling
a gorget that for an instant I mistook it for a scarlet flower. I
did not "wipe my eye," not being a poet, nor even a "rash gazer,"
but I admired anew the wonderful flashing jewel, now coal-black,
now flaming red, with which, perhaps, the male ruby-throat blinds
his long-suffering mate to all his shameful treatment of her in her
season of watchfulness and motherly anxiety. Does she never remind
him, I wonder, that there are some things whose price is far above
rubies? I had never seen the humming-bird so much a forest-dweller as
here, and gladly confessed that I had never seen him when he looked
so romantically at home and in place. The tulip-trees, in particular,
might have been made on purpose for him.
As the Chattanooga neighborhood was poorly supplied with hawks,
woodpeckers, and swallows, so was it likewise with sparrows, though
in a less marked degree. The common species--the only resident
species that I met with, but my explorations were nothing like
complete--were chippers, field sparrows, and Bachman sparrows; the
first interesting for their familiarity, the other two for their
musical gifts. In a comparison between eastern Tennessee--as I
saw it--and eastern Massachusetts, the Bachman sparrow must be set
against the song sparrow, the vesper sparrow, and the swamp sparrow.
It is a brilliant and charming songster, one of the very finest; but
it would be too costly a bargain to buy its presence with loss of the
song sparrow's abounding versatility and high spirits, and the vesper
sparrow's unfailing sweetness, serenity, and charm.
So much for the sparrows, commonly so called. If we come to the
family as a whole, the goodly family of sparrows and finches, we miss
in Tennessee the rose-breasted grosbeak and the purple finch, two of
our best esteemed Massachusetts birds, both for music and for beauty;
to offset which we have the cardinal grosbeak, whose whistle is
exquisite, but who can hardly be ranked as a singer above either the
rose-breast or the linnet, to say nothing of the two combined.
At the season of my visit,--in the latter half of the vernal
migration,--the preponderance of woodland birds, especially of the
birds known as wood warblers, was very striking. Of ninety-three
species observed, twenty-eight belonged to the warbler family. In
this list it was curious to remark the absence of the Nashville and
the Tennessee. The circumstance is significant of the comparative
worthlessness--except from a historical point of view--of locality
names as they are applied to American birds in general. Here were
Maryland yellow-throats, Cape May warblers, Canada warblers, Kentucky
warblers, prairie warblers, palm warblers, Acadian flycatchers,
but not the two birds (the only two, as well as I remember) that
bear Tennessee names.[4] The absence of the Nashville was a matter
of wonderment to me. Dr. Rives, I have since noticed, records it
as only a rare migrant in Virginia. Yet by some route it reaches
eastern New England in decidedly handsome numbers. Its congener,
the blue golden-wing, surprised me in an opposite direction,--by
its commonness, both in the lower country near the river and on
Walden's Ridge. This, too, is a rare bird in Virginia; so much so
that Dr. Rives has never met with it there. In certain places about
Chattanooga it was as common as it is locally in the towns about
Boston, where, to satisfy a skeptical friend, I once counted eleven
males in song in the course of a morning's walk. That the Chattanooga
birds were on their breeding grounds I had at the time no question,
although I happened upon no proof of the fact.
In the same way, from the manner in which the oven-birds were
scattered over Walden's Ridge in the middle of May, I assumed, rather
hastily, that they were at home for the summer. Months afterward,
however, happening to notice their southern breeding limits as
given by the best of authorities,--"breeding from ... Virginia
northward,"--I saw that I might easily have been in error. I wrote,
therefore, to a Chattanooga gentleman, who pays attention to birds
while disclaiming acquaintance with ornithology, and he replied
that if the oven-bird summered in that country he did not know it.
The case seemed to be going against me, but I bethought myself
of Mr. Brewster's "Ornithological Reconnaissance in Western North
Carolina," and there I read,[5] "The open oak woodlands, so prevalent
in this region, are in every way adapted to the requirements of
the oven-bird, and throughout them it is one of the commonest and
most characteristic summer birds." "Open oak woodlands" is exactly
descriptive of the Walden's Ridge forest; and eastern Tennessee and
western North Carolina being practically one, I resume my assured
belief (personal and of no authority) that the birds I saw and heard
were, as I first thought, natives of the mountain. Birds which are
at home have, as a rule, an air of being at home; a certain manner
hard to define, but felt, nevertheless, as a pretty strong kind of
evidence--not proof--by a practiced observer.
Several of the more northern species of the warbler family manifested
an almost exclusive preference for patches of evergreens. I have
elsewhere detailed my experience in a grove of stunted pines on
Lookout Mountain. A similar growth is found on Cameron Hill,--in the
city of Chattanooga,--one side of which is occupied by dwellings,
while the other drops to the river so precipitously as to be almost
inaccessible, and is even yet, I was told, an abode of foxes. On
the day after my arrival I strolled to the top of the hill toward
evening, and in the pines found a few black-polls and yellow-rumps.
I was in a listless mood, having already taken a fair day's exercise
under an intolerable sun, but I waked up with a start when my glass
fell on a bird which at a second glance showed the red cheeks of a
Cape May warbler. For a moment I was almost in poor Susan's case,--
"I looked, and my heart was in heaven."
Then, all too soon, as happened to poor Susan also, the vision faded.
But I had seen it. Yes, here it was in Tennessee, the rarity for
which, spring after spring, I had been so many years on the watch. I
had come South to find it, after all,--a bird that breeds from the
northern border of New England to Hudson's Bay!
It is of the nature of such excitements that, at the time, the
subject of them has no thought of analyzing or justifying his
emotions. He is better employed. Afterward, in some vacant mood,
with no longer anything actively to enjoy, he may play with the
past, and from an evil habit, or flattering himself with a show of
intellectuality, may turn his former delight into a study; tickling
his present conceit of himself by smiling at the man he used to
be. How very wise he has grown, to be sure! All such refinements,
nevertheless, if he did but know it, are only a poorer kind of
child's play; less spontaneous, infinitely less satisfying, and
equally irrational. Ecstasy is not to be assayed by any test that
the reason is competent to apply; nor does it need either defense or
apology. It is its own end, and so, like beauty, its own excuse for
being. That is one of the crowning felicities of this present order
of things,--the world, as we call it. What dog would hunt if there
were no excitement in overhauling the game? And how would elderly
people live through long evenings if there were no exhilaration in
the odd trick?