Wild Northern Scenes Part 4

"'Why, husband,' said she, 'there are no dogs here,' and as she lighted the gas the curs vanished away. But I saw them in the darkness. It was only when the light flashed through the room, that they fled from it, and I heard them barking in response to each other through all the long night, till the dawn crept over the world again.

"Years ago, I saved a boy from the meshes of the law, in which his evil ways had involved him. I admonished him of the end towards which he was hastening. I showed him that the path he was treading led to destruction, and he left it, as he said, forever. He apprenticed himself to a useful trade, and is now an intelligent mechanic. Out of his time, an industrious, sober youth of two and twenty, supporting by his industry, his mother and sister in comfort and respectability.

He heard of my sickness, and on Wednesday morning called to see me, proffering his services as a nurse and watchman, prompted by grat.i.tude for the past. I declined his kindness for the present, as I told him casually of the dog whose midnight barking was killing me. He called again on Thursday morning. The barking had ceased. He inquired if I had been troubled with the yelping of that senseless cur, and I answered truly that I had not, that I had slept soundly, and woke with a softened pulse and a cooled brain.

"'Well,' said he, 'I thought you would rest easier. I looked into the yard as I came along, and saw a dead dog lying there. I thought may be he had barked himself to death.'

"I did not at the time take in the full meaning, the hidden import of his words. I dropped away into slumber, and dreamed of the dog that barked himself to death. I saw him vanish by piecemeal at each successive bark, until nothing but his jaws were left, and as his last bark was uttered, these, too, vanished away, and then all was still.

"I awoke, and thought that a dose of 'dog-b.u.t.tons,' or a taste of strychnine, administered with a tempting bit of cold steak, or a piece of fresh lamb, or a bone of mutton carefully dropped in his way, might have aided the operation. Be that as it may, whatever of debt may have existed between my young friend and myself for past kind it is all wiped out by the news he brought me, that a 'dead dog lay in the yard over the way.'"

CHAPTER VIII.

STONY BROOK--A GOOD TIME WITH THE TROUT--RACKETT RIVER--TUPPER'S LAKE--A QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED.

The next morning we started down Stony Brook, towards the Rackett River, intending to pitch our tents at night on the banks of Tupper's Lake, twenty-three miles distant. Before leaving the Spectacle Ponds, we visited a little island at the north end of the middle pond, containing perhaps half an acre. This island has a few Norway pines upon it, is of a loose sandy soil, and at the highest portion is some twenty feet above the level of the water. It is a great resort for turtle in the season of depositing their eggs. We found thousands of their eggs, some on the surface and some buried in the sand, and if one in a dozen of them brings forth a turtle, there will be no lack of the animal in the neighborhood. Stony Brook is a sluggish, tortuous stream, large enough to float our little boats, and goes meandering most of the way for five miles among natural meadows, overflowed at high water, or thinly timbered prairie, when it enters the Rackett. I discovered on a former visit to this wilderness, when the water was very low, a spring that came boiling up near the centre of the stream, with a volume large enough almost to carry a mill. It was at a point where a high sandy bluff, along which the stream swept, terminated. As we approached this spot, I suggested to Spalding, who was in the bow of the boat, to prepare his rod and fly. We approached carefully along the willows on the opposite sh.o.r.e, until in a position from which he could throw in the direction I indicated. In the then stage of the water, there was no appearance of a spring, or any indication marking it as a spot where the trout would be at all likely to congregate, and Spalding was half inclined to believe that I was practising upon his want of knowledge of the habits of the fish of this region. I had said nothing about the spring, or the habit of the trout in gathering wherever a cold stream enters a river, or a spring comes gus.h.i.+ng up in its bed.

"I don't believe there's a trout within half a mile of us," he said, as he adjusted his rod and fly.

"Never mind," I replied, "throw your fly across towards that boulder on the bank, and trail it home, and you'll see."

"Well," said he, "here goes;" and he threw in the direction indicated.

The fly had scarcely touched the water when a trout, weighing a pound or over, struck it with a rush that carried him clear out of the water. After a little play he was landed safely in the boat, and another, and another, followed at almost every throw. Not once did the fly touch the water that it was not risen to by a fish.

"By Jove!" said Spalding, as he handed me the landing-net to take in his third or fourth trout, "this is sport. You use the net, and I'll trail them to you. Let us make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes. The other boat will soon be along, and Smith will be for dipping his spoon into my dish. I want to astonish him when he comes."

We had secured eight beautiful fish when the Doctor and Smith rounded the point above us. We motioned them back, and their boat lay upon its oars. Spalding kept on throwing his fly and trailing the trout to me to secure with the landing-net."

"Hallo!" shouted Smith, "hold on there; fair play, my friends, give me a hand in," and he fell to adjusting his rod and flies.

"Keep back, you lubber," replied Spalding; "what do _you_ know about trout-fis.h.i.+ng? You'll frighten them all away by your awkwardness."

"No you don't!" shouted Smith, his rod now adjusted. "Drop down, boatman, and we'll see who is the lubber. Wait, Spalding! Don't throw, if you are a true man, until we can take a fair start, and then the one that comes out second best pays the piper."

The boat dropped down to the proper position, and the Doctor, who was seated in the stern, held it in place by pressing his paddle into the sand at the bottom, while the boatman handled the landing net.

"Now!" exclaimed Smith, as the flies dropped upon the water together above the cold spring. There was no lack of trout, for one rose to the fly at every cast.

"I say," said the Doctor, "how many have you in your boat?"

"Sixteen," I replied, after counting them.

"We've got eight, and I bar any more fis.h.i.+ng. The law has reached its limit. No wanton waste of the good things of G.o.d, you know."

The rods were unjointed and laid away, and such a string of trout as we had, is rarely seen outside of the Saranac woods. We procured fresh gra.s.s in which to lay our fish, and green boughs to cover them, and floated on down the stream, entering the Rackett at nine o'clock. The Rackett is a most beautiful river. To me at least it is so, for it flows on its tortuous and winding way for a hundred or more miles through an unbroken forest, with all the old things standing in their primeval grandeur along its banks. The woodman's axe has not marred the loveliness of its surroundings, and no human hand has for all that distance been laid upon its mane, or harnessed it to the great wheel, making it a slave, compelling it to be utilitarian, to grind corn or throw the shuttle and spin. It moves on towards the mighty St.

Lawrence as wild, and halterless, and free, as when the Great Spirit sent it forward on its everlasting flow. The same scenery, and the same voices are seen and heard along its banks now as then; and, while man, in his restlessness, has changed almost everything else, the Rackett and the things that pertained to it when the earth was young, remain unchanged. But this will not be so long. Civilization is pus.h.i.+ng its way even towards this wild and, for all agricultural purposes, sterile region, and before many years even the Rackett will be within its ever-extending circle. When that time shall have arrived, where shall we go to find the woods, the wild things, the old forests, and hear the sounds which belong to nature in its primeval state? Whither shall we flee from civilization, to take off the harness and be free, for a season, from the restraints, the conventionalities of society, and rest from the hard struggles, the cares and toils, the strifes and compet.i.tions of life? Had I my way, I would mark out a circle of a hundred miles in diameter, and throw around it the protecting aegis of the const.i.tution. I would make it a forest forever. It should be a misdemeanor to chop down a tree, and a felony to clear an acre within its boundaries. The old woods should stand here always as G.o.d made them, growing on until the earthworm ate away their roots, and the strong winds hurled them to the ground, and new woods should be permitted to supply the place of the old so long as the earth remained. There is room enough for civilization in regions better fitted for it. It has no business among these mountains, these rivers and lakes, these gigantic boulders, these tangled valleys and dark mountain gorges. Let it go where labor will garner a richer harvest, and industry reap a better reward for its toil. It will be of stinted growth at best here.

"I like these old woods," said a gentleman, whom I met on the Rackett last year; "I like them, because one can do here just what he pleases.

He can wear a s.h.i.+rt a week, have holes in his pantaloons, and be out at elbows, go with his boots unblacked, drink whisky in the raw, chew plug tobacco, and smoke a black pipe, and not lose his position in society. Now," continued he, "tho' I don't choose to do any of these things, yet I love the freedom, now and then, of doing just all of them if I choose, without human accountability. The truth is, that it is natural as well as necessary for every man to be a vagabond occasionally, to throw off the restraints imposed upon him by the necessities and conventionalities of civilization, and turn savage for a season,--and what place is left for such transformation, save these northern forests?"

The idea was somewhat quaint, but to me it smacked of philosophy, and I yielded it a hearty a.s.sent. I would consecrate these old forests, these rivers and lakes, these mountains and valleys to the Vagabond Spirit, and make them a place wherein a man could turn savage and rest, for a fortnight or a month, from the toils and cares of life.

We entered TUPPER'S LAKE towards six o'clock, and saw our white tents pitched upon the left bank, some half a mile above the outlet, where a little stream, cold almost as icewater, comes down from a spring a short way back in the forest. This lake, some ten miles long, and from one to three in width, is one of the most beautiful sheets of water that the eye of man ever looked upon. The scenery about it is less bold than that of some of the other lakes of this region. The hills rise with a gentle acclivity from the sh.o.r.e; behind them and far off rise rugged mountain ranges; and further still, the lofty peaks of the Adirondacks loom up in dim and shadowy outline against the sky.

From every point and in every direction, are views of placid and quiet beauty rarely equalled; valleys stretching away among the highlands; gaps in the hills, through which the sunlight pours long after the shadows of the forest have elsewhere thrown themselves across the lake; islands, some bold and rocky, rising in barren desolation, right up from the deep water; some covered with a dense and thrifty growth of evergreen trees, with a soil matchless in fertility; and some partaking of both the sterile and productive; beautiful bays stealing around bold promontories, and hiding away among the old woods. These are the features of this beautiful sheet of water, which none see but to admire, none visit but to praise; and it lies here all alone, surrounded by the old hills and forests, bold bluffs, and rocky sh.o.r.es, all as G.o.d made them, with no mark of the hand of man about it, save in a single spot on a secluded bay, where lives a solitary family in a log house, surrounded by an acre or two, from which the forest has been cleared away.

"Will somebody tell me," said Smith, as we sat on the logs in front of our tent after supper, smudging away the musquitoes with our pipes, "will somebody tell me what we came into this wilderness among these musquitoes, and frogs, and owls for? Mind you, I am not discontented; I enjoy it hugely; but what I want to know is _why_ I do so? I desire to understand the philosophy of the thing."

"As the question involves, in some sense, a physiological fact,"

replied the Doctor, "it comes within the range of my professional duties to understand and be able to answer it, for you must know that the enjoyments of this region are primarily physical. Now I've a theory which is this--that every man has a certain amount of vagabondism in his composition that will be pretty certain to break out in spots occasionally. At all events it is so with me, and from my observation of men, I am strong in the faith that it is so with every one who is neither more nor less than human. It is all a mistake to suppose that I come off here, enduring a heap of hards.h.i.+p and toil, simply for the love of fis.h.i.+ng and hunting, though I confess to a weakness to a certain extent that way. The charm of this region consists in the fact, that it is the best place to play the vagabond, and in which to do the savage for a season, that I know of. You can go bareheaded or barefooted, without a coat or neckerchief, get as ragged and untidy as you please, without subjecting yourself to remark, or offending the nice sense of propriety pertaining to conventional life.

You are not responsible for what you say or do, provided always that you do not offend against the abstract rules of decency, or the requirements of natural decorum. You can lay around loose; the lazier you are the better the boatman in your employ likes it. If you choose to drift leisurely and quietly under the shadow of the hills along the sh.o.r.e, examining the rocks that lie there like a ruined wall, or explore the beautiful and secluded bays that hide around behind the bluffs, or lay off under the shade of the fir trees on the islands, or smoke your cigar or pipe by the beautiful spring that comes bubbling up by the side of some moss-covered boulder, or from beneath the tangled roots of some gnarled birch or maple, you can do any or all of these, and have a man to help you for twelve s.h.i.+llings a day and board, or you can do it just about as well alone.

"You remember LONESOME ROCK, in the Lower Saranac, a great boulder that lifts its head some ten or fifteen feet above the surface, away out near the middle of the lake, around which the water is of unknown depth. This rock, which is always dark and bare, is, as you will remember, of conical shape, sharp pointed at the top, and stands up about the size of a small hay-stack, in the midst of the waters. Do you remember the account that somebody gives in a ragged but terse kind of verse, of the 'gentleman in black,' who, as he walked about,

'Backward and forward he switched his long rail, As a gentleman switches his cane?'

And of whose dress it was facetiously said:

'His coat was red and his breeches were blue, With a hole behind for his tail to stick through.'

another author said of him on one of his fis.h.i.+ng excursions, that

'His rod, it was a st.u.r.dy mountain oak, His line, a cable which no storm e'er broke, His hook he baited with a dragon's tail, And sat upon a rock and bob'd for whale!'

Well, like the ebony gentleman, you can, if you choose, sit upon Lonesome Rock enjoying your meditations, and bobbing, not for whale, for whatever other fish may be found in the Lower Saranac, I believe there are no whale; but you can bob for trout; whether you will catch any or not will depend very much on circ.u.mstances. It is a capital place to cast the fly from, or to sink your hook with a bait, and if the trout do not choose to bite, whose fault is that, I should like to know?

"And this reminds me of an anecdote told me by a gentleman I met in June of last year, on the Rackett River among the black flies, of an adventure he met with on Lonesome Rock last season. He had been trolling around the lake in a boat alone, without much success, and concluded he would try deep fis.h.i.+ng from this rock, as he had heard that the trout were in the habit of congregating around its base. So he rowed to the rock, and, as he supposed, secured his boat, and climbing up its side seated himself on his boat cus.h.i.+on, on the top.

He caught one fine fish at the first throw, and took it for granted that he was going to have a good time of it among the trout. When he mounted the rock, about eleven o'clock, the sky was overcast, and he caught three or four trout of good size in the course of half an hour; but the sun coming out bright and clear, the fish altered their minds, and refused to have anything more to do with his hook. He finally concluded to give up the business, and seek the cooling shadows of the forest trees along the sh.o.r.e. But his boat was gone; and upon looking around he saw it drifting before a light breeze a quarter of a mile distant. Now when you remember that all around the lake was a wilderness, save a single spot at the head of the bay, where Martin's house stands, three or four miles distant, and when you remember also that no boat might be pa.s.sing during the next twenty-four hours, you will comprehend that his position was none of the pleasantest. There he sat upon the top of his rock, with scarcely room to turn around, with a wide sweep of deep water between him and the nearest land, the fish utterly refusing to bite, and the sun blazing down upon him with heat like a furnace, as it crept with its snail's pace across the sky.

At first he was inclined to smile at his ridiculous situation, all alone there on the rock; but as the wind died away, and the sun poured his burning rays right down upon him, and he panted and sweat under its sweltering influences, he began to feel a little more serious.

Hours glided away, and the sun crept slowly along down the heavens, but still no boat made its appearance.

"The sun hid itself behind the hills on the West, and still he was alone. The shadows crept up the mountain peaks that stand up like grim giants away off in the East, and twilight began to throw its grey mantle over the lake; still he was alone. The darkness began to gather around him; the forests along the sh.o.r.e to lose their distinctness and to stand in sombre and shadowy outline above the water; still no prospect of relief presented itself. The twilight faded from the West, the stars stole out in the heavens, the milky way stretched its belt of light across the sky, and there he sat alone still on his rock, the night dews falling around him, and the night voices of the forest coming solemnly out over the water. Things had now a.s.sumed a serious aspect. He could not stretch his limbs save by standing erect, and it seemed inevitable that he must watch the stars during the night, as he had watched the sun during the day. To sleep there was out of the question. There was no room for a sleeping posture, and the danger of rolling down the rock into the water kept him wide awake. At length the pleasant sound of oars, and voices in jolly converse, fell upon his ear, and he shouted. Two sportsmen were returning from the Upper Lakes, and right welcome was the answer they returned to his call. He was glad enough to be released from his rock, upon which, as he said, 'he had made up his mind that he should be compelled to roost, like a turkey on the ridge of a barn, for the night.'

"To go back from this digression," continued the Doctor, "I repeat that every man has a vein of the vagabond, a streak of the savage in him, which can never be clean wiped out. Educate him, polish him as you may, it will be in him still, and he will love to go off into the old woods at times, to lay around loose for a season, vagabondising among the wild and savage things of the wilderness. It is but indulging the original instincts of our nature. True, he will not relish his savage ways a great while. His old habits will lead him back to civilization, to the luxury of a well-furnished room, the quiet of an easy chair, and the repose of a soft bed. In a word to 'clean up' and shave and dress, so that when he looks into a gla.s.s he will see the shadow of a gentleman."

CHAPTER IX.

HUNTING BY TORCH LIGHT--AN INCOMPETENT JUDGE--A NEW SOUND IN THE FOREST--OLD SANGAMO'S DONKEY.

Spalding and Martin went out upon the lake after dark, with one of the boats, to hunt by torch light. This is done by placing a lighted torch, or a lamp upon a standard, placed upright in the bow of the boat, and so high that a man seated or lying upon the bottom of the craft, will have his head below it. He must himself be in someway shaded from the light, which must be cast forward so that both the hunter and the boatman will be in the shadow. A very common method is to make a box, a foot or less square, open, or with a pane of gla.s.s on one side; a stick three or four feet long is run through an auger hole in the top and bottom, and wedged fast, which forms a standard; the other end of the stick is run through a hole on the little deck on the forward part of the boat, and placed in a socket formed for the purpose in the bottom, and is wedged at the deck, so as to make it steady. The open or gla.s.s front of the box is turned forward, and a common j.a.pan lamp placed in a socket prepared for it in the box. This of course throws the light forward, while the occupants of the boat are in the shadow. The hunter sits, or more commonly lies at length on a bed of boughs in the bottom of the boat, with his rifle so far in front that the light will fall upon the forward sight. An experienced boatman will paddle silently up to within twenty feet of a deer that may be feeding along the sh.o.r.e. The stupid animal will stand, gazing in astonishment at the light, until the boat almost touches him.