Nature and Human Nature Part 24

This is the way to scare a whole pack of them;" and stooping down and opening a sack, he took out the bagpipes, and struck up a favourite Highland air. If it was calculated to alarm the animals of the forest, it at all events served now to recall the party, who soon made their appearance from the moose-yard. "Tat," said Peter, "will make 'em scamper like the tevil. It has saved her life several times."

"So I should think," said I. (For of all the awful instruments that ever was heard that is the worst. Pigs in a bag ain't the smallest part of a circ.u.mstance to it, for the way it squeals is a caution to cats.) When the devil was a carpenter, he cut his foot so bad with an adze, he threw it down, and gave up the trade in disgust. And now that Highlanders have given up the trade of barbarism, and become the n.o.blest fellows in Europe, they should follow the devil's example, and throw away the bagpipes for ever.

"I have never seen M'Clure," said Jackson, addressing me, "but once since he disputed with the countryman about the plural of moose in the country-market. I met him in the street one day, and says I,

"'How are you, Rory? Suppose we take a bit of a walk.'

"Well, he held up his ead stiff and straight, and didn't speak for a minute or two; at last he said:

"'How do you do, Sargeant Jackson?'

"'Why, Rory,' sais I, 'what hails you to hact that way? What's the matter with you now, to treat an old comrade in that manner?'

"He stared ard at me in the face hagain, without giving any explanation. At last he said, 'Sargeant Jackson,' and then he stopped again. 'If anybody speers at you where Ensign Roderich M'Clure is to be found, say on the second flat of the officers' quarters at the North Barracks,' and he walked on and left me. He had got his commission."

"She had a Highland name," said Peter, "and tat is all, but she was only a lowland Glaskow peast. Ta teivil tack a' such friends a tat."

"Doctor," said I, "Jessie and I have discovered the canoe, and had a glorious row of it. I see you have a new skiff there; suppose we all finish the morning on the lake. We have been up to the waterfall, and if it is agreeable to you, Jessie proposes to dine at the intervale instead of the house."

"Just the thing," said the doctor, "but you understand these matters better than I do, so just give what instructions you think proper."

Jackson and Betty were accordingly directed to pack up what was needful, and hold themselves in readiness to be embarked on our return from the excursion on the water. Jessie, her sister, and myself took the canoe; the doctor and Cutler the boat, and Peter was placed at the stern to awaken the sleeping echoes of the lake with his pipes. The doctor seeing me provided with a short gun, ran hastily back to the house for his bow and arrows, and thus equipped and grouped, we proceeded up the lake, the canoe taking the lead. Peter struck up a tune on his pipes. The great expanse of water, and the large open area where they were played, as well as the novelty of the scene, almost made me think that it was not such bad music after all as I had considered it.

After we had proceeded a short distance, Jessie proposed a race between the canoe and the boat. I tried to dissuade her from it, on account of the fatigue she had already undergone, and the excitement she had manifested at the waterfall, but she declared herself perfectly well, and able for the contest. The odds were against the girls; for the captain and the doctor were both experienced hands, and powerful, athletic man, and their boat was a flat-bottomed skiff, and drew but little water. Added to which, the young women had been long out of practice, and their hands and muscles were unprepared by exercise. I yielded at last, on condition that the race should terminate at a large rock that rose out of the lake at about a mile from us. I named this distance, not merely because I wished to limit the extent of their exertion, but because I knew that if they had the lead that far, they would be unable to sustain it beyond that, and that they would be beaten by the main strength of the rowers. We accordingly slackened our speed till the boat came up alongside of us.

The challenge was given and accepted, and the terminus pointed out, and when the signal was made, away we went with great speed.

For more than two-thirds of the distance we were bow and bow, sometimes one and sometimes the other being ahead, but on no occasion did the distance exceed a yard or so. When we had but the remaining third to accomplish, I cautioned the girls that the rowers would now probably put out all their strength, and take them by surprise, and therefore advised them to be on their guard. They said a few words to each other in their native language, laughed, and at once prepared for the crisis, by readjusting their seats and foothold, and then the eldest said, with a look of animation, that made her surpa.s.singly beautiful, "Now," and away we went like iled lightning, leaving the boat behind at a rate that was perfectly incredible.

They had evidently been playing with them at first, and doing no more than to ascertain their speed and power of propulsion, and had all along intended to reserve themselves for this triumph at the last. As soon as we reached the winning point, I rose up to give the cheer of victory, but just at that moment, they suddenly backed water with their paddles, and in turning towards the boat, the toe of my boot caught in one of the light ribs of the canoe, which had been loosened by the heat of the sun, and I instantly saw that a fall was unavoidable. To put a hand on the side of the little bark would inevitably overset it, and precipitate the girls into the lake. I had but one resource left therefore, and that was to arch over the gunwale, and lift my feet clear of it, while I dove into the water. It was the work of an instant, and in another I had again reached the canoe. Begging Jessie to move forward, so as to counterbalance my weight, I rose over the stern (if a craft can be said to have one, where both ends are alike, and it can be propelled either way), and then took the seat that had been occupied by her.

"Now, Jane," said I, "I must return to the house, and get a dry suit of the doctor's clothes; let us see what we can do."

The doctor told me Betty knew more about his wardrobe than he did himself, and would furnish me with what I required; and in the mean time, that they would lay upon their oars till we returned.

"Are you ready, Miss," said I, "I want you to do your prettiest now, and put your best foot out, because I wish them to see that I am not the awkward critter in a canoe they think I am."

The fact is, Squire, that neither the doctor nor Cutler knew, that to avoid falling under the circ.u.mstances I was placed in, and to escape without capsizing the canoe, was a feat that no man, but one familiar with the management of those fragile barks, and a good swimmer, too, can perform. Peter was aware of it, and appreciated it; but the other two seemed disposed to cut their jokes upon me; and them that do that, generally find, in the long run, I am upsides with them, that's a fact. A cat and a Yankee always come on their feet, pitch them up in the air as high and as often as you please.

"Now for it," said I, and away we went at a 2.30 pace, as we say of our trotting horses. Cutler and the doctor cheered us as we went; and Peter, as the latter told me afterwards, said: "A man who can dwell like an otter, on both land and sea, has two lives." I indorse that saw, he made it himself; it's genuine, and it was like a trapper's maxim. Warn't it?

As soon as I landed I cut off for the house, and in no time rigged up in a dry suit of our host's, and joined the party, afore they knew where they were. I put on a face as like the doctor's as two clocks of mine are to each other. I didn't do it to make fun of him, but out of him. Oh, they roared again, and the doctor joined in it as heartily as any of them, though he didn't understand the joke. But Peter didn't seem to like it. He had lived so much among the Indians, and was so accustomed to their way of biling things down to an essence, that he spoke in proverbs, or wise saws. Says he to me, with a shake of his head, "a mocking bird has no voice of its own." It warn't a bad sayin', was it? I wish I had noted more of them, for though I like 'em, I am so yarney, I can't make them as pithey as he did. I can't talk short-hand, and I must say I like condensation. Now, brevity is the only use to individuals there is in telegraphs. There is very little good news in the world for any of us; and bad news comes fast enough. I hate them myself. The only good there is in 'em, is to make people write short; for if you have to pay for every word you use, you won't be extravagant in 'em, there is no mistake.

Telegraphs ruin intellect; they reduce a wise man to the level of a fool; and fifty years hence there won't be a sensible trader left. For national purposes they are very well, and government ought to have kept them to themselves, for those objects; but they play the devil with merchants. There is no room for the exercise of judgment. It's a dead certainty now. Flour is eight dollars in England; well, every one knows that, and the price varies, and every one knows that also, by telegraph. Before that, a judgmatical trader took his cigar in his mouth, sat down, and calculated. Crops short, Russian war, blockade, and so on. Capital will run up prices, till news of new harvest are known; and then they will come down by the run. He deliberates, reasons, and decides. Now, the last Liverpool paper gives the price current. It advises all, and governs all. Any blockhead can be a merchant now. Formerly, they poked sapey-headed goneys into Parliament, to play dummey; or into the army and navy, the church, and the colonial office. But they kept clever fellows for law, special commissioners, the stage, the "Times," the "Chronicle," and such like able papers, and commerce; and men of middlin' talents were resarved for doctors, solicitors, Gretna Green, and so on.

But the misfortinate prince-merchants now will have to go to the bottom of the list with tradesmen and retailers. They can't have an opinion of their own, the telegraph will give it. The latest quotations, as they call them, come to them, they know that iron is firm, and timber giving way, that lead is dull and heavy, and coal gone to blases, while the stocks are rising and vessels sinking, all the rest they won't trouble their heads about. The man who trades with Cuba, won't care about Sinope, and it's too much trouble to look for it on the map. While the Black Sea man won't care about Toronto, or whether it is in Nova Scotia or Vermont, in Canada or California.

There won't soon be a merchant that understands geography.

But what is wuss, half the time the news is false, and if it hadn't been for that, old Hemp and Iron would have made a fortune. And if it is true, it's worse still, for he would have acted on his own judgment if he hadn't heard it, and circ.u.mstances would have altered as they always are doing every day, and he would have made a rael hit. Oh, I hate them. And besides this, they have spoiled them by swearing the operators. An oath gives them fellows such an itch to blart, that though they don't inform, they let the cat out of the bag, and that is as bad. Tell you what, I wouldn't like to confess by telegraph. If I am courting a gall and she sais all right, why then my fun is spoiled, for when a thing is settled, all excitement is gone, and if I am refused, the longer I am in ignorance the better. It is wiser to wait, as the Frenchman did at Clare, who sat up three nights to see how the letters pa.s.sed over the wires. Well, if I am married, I have to report progress, and logbooks are always made up before or afterwards. It's apt to injure my veracity. In short, you know what I mean, and I needn't follow it out, for a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.

But the Lord have mercy on merchants, any fool will get along as well as the best of them now. Dear me, I recollect a man they poked fun at once at Salem. They induced him by way of a rise, to s.h.i.+p a cargo of blankets and warming-pans to the West Indies. Well, he did so, and made a good speck, for the pans were bought for dippers, and the blankets for strainers. Yes, telegraphs will reduce merchants to the level of that fellow Isaac Oxter.

But I must look for the trail again, or I shall forget my story.

I think I left off where I got back in the canoe, and joined the party in the boat. Well, we then proceeded like the off and near ox, pulling from rather than to each other, but still keeping neck and neck as it were. In this manner we proceeded to the head of the lake, and then as we returned steered for a small wooded island in the centre, where I proposed to land and rest awhile, for this beautiful sheet of water was of considerable extent. As we approached it, Peter again struck up his pipes, and shortly afterwards a n.o.ble male moose, as much terrified by the noise as McDonald said Canada wolves were, broke cover, and swam for the main land. The moose frequently select such places to secure their young from the bears, who are their greatest enemies, and find an easy prey in their helpless calves. It is not improbable that the female still remained, and that this act of gallantry in the buck was intended to withdraw attention from her, and thus save her from pursuit. I had no bullets with me, and my gun was only loaded with duck-shot. To discharge that at him, would have been a wanton act of cruelty, as at most it could only inflict upon him painful wounds. In this emergency, Jessie pointed to a stout half-inch rope that was coiled up in the bottom of the canoe, and I immediately exchanged places with her, and commenced making a la.s.so, while she plied the paddle.

We gained rapidly upon him, and I was preparing to throw the fatal noose over his horns, when to my astonishment he raised his neck and a portion of his fore-legs out of the water, as if he was landing. We were then a considerable distance from the sh.o.r.e, but it appeared, as I afterwards learned from the doctor, that a long low neck of land made out there into the lake, that was only submerged in the spring and autumn, but in summer was covered with wild gra.s.s, upon which deer fed with avidity, as an agreeable change from browsing. The instinct of the animal induced him to make for this shallow, from which he could bound away at full speed (trot) into the cover.

All hope of the chase was now over, and I was about abandoning it in despair, when an arrow whizzed by us, and in an instant he sprang to his feet, and exposed his huge form to view. He was a remarkable fine specimen of his kind, for they are the largest as well as the ugliest of the deer tribe. For an instant he paused, shook himself violently, and holding down his head, put up his fore-leg to break off that, which evidently maddened him with pain. He then stood up erect, with his head high in the air, and laid his horns back on his neck, and, giving a snort of terror, prepared to save his life by flight.

It is astonis.h.i.+ng how much animation and att.i.tude has to do with beauty. I had never seen one look well before, but as his form was relieved against the sky, he looked as he is, the giant king of the forest. He was just in the act of s.h.i.+fting his feet in the yielding surface of the boggy meadow, preparatory to a start, when he was again transfixed by an arrow, in a more vulnerable and vital part. He sprung, or rather reared forward, and came down on his knees, and then several times repeated the attempt to commence his flight by the same desperate effort. At last he fell to rise no more, and soon rolled over, and after some splas.h.i.+ng with his head to avoid the impending death by drowning, quietly submitted to his fate. Nothing now was visible of him but the tips of his horns, and a small strip of the hide that covered his ribs. A shout from the boat proclaimed the victory.

"Ah, Mr Slick," said the doctor, "what could you have done with only a charge of duck-shot in your gun, eh? The arrow, you see, served for shot and bullet. I could have killed him with the first shaft, but his head was turned, and covered the vital spot. So I had to aim a little too far forward, but still it carried a death-warrant with it, for he couldn't have run over a mile without falling from exhaustion, arising from the loss of blood. It is a charming day for the bow, for there is no wind, and I could hit a dollar at a hundred and twenty yards. There is another on that island, but she probably has a calf, perhaps two, and it would be a wicked waste of the food that G.o.d provides for us, to destroy her. But we must get this gentleman into the boat, and it will bring us down so deep in the water, we must keep near the sh.o.r.e, as it may be necessary occasionally to wade."

Peter, without ceremony, began to make preparations for such an emergency. He had been accustomed all his life, until he left the Nor-west Company's employment, to the kilt, and he neither felt nor looked at home in the trousers. Like most of his countrymen, he thought there was more beauty in a hairy leg, and in a manly shammy-leather looking skin, than in any covering. While his bald knee, the ugliest, weakest, most complicated and important joint in the frame, he no doubt regarded with as much veneration as the pious do the shaven crown of a monk. He therefore very complacently and coolly began to disenc.u.mber himself of this detestable article of the tailor's skill. I thought it best therefore to push off in time, to spare his daughters this spectacle, merely telling the doctor we would wait for him where we had embarked.

We proceeded very leisurely, only once in a while dipping the paddle gently into the water, so as to keep up the motion of the canoe. The girls amused themselves by imitating the call and answer of the loon, the blue-jay, the kingfisher, and the owl. With a piece of bark, rolled up in the form of a short-ear trumpet, they mimicked the hideous voice of the moose, and the not less disagreeable lowing of the cariboo. The martin started in surprise at his affrighted neighbour on the water, and the fox no doubt crept from his hole to listen to the voice that called him to plunder, at this dangerous hour. All these sounds are signals among the Indians, and are carried to a perfection that deceives the ear of nature itself. I had read of their great power in this species of ventriloquism, but never had heard it practised before, with the exception of the imitation of the deer tribe, which is well-known to white "still-hunters."

They are, in their own country, not very communicative to strangers; and above all, never disclose practices so peculiarly reserved for their own service or defence. I was amazed at their skill in this branch of Indian accomplishment.

But the notes of the dear little chick-a-dee-dee charmed me the most.

The stillness of this wild, sequestered place was most agreeably diversified by all these fict.i.tious birds and beasts, that seemed inviting, each his own kind, to come and look at this lovely scene.

From the wonderful control they appeared to have over their voices, I knew that one or both of them must sing. I therefore asked them if they knew the Canadian-boat song; and they answered, with great delight, that they did. And suiting the action to the word, which, by the by, adds marvellously to its effect, they sung it charmingly. I couldn't resist their entreaties to join in it, although I would infinitely have preferred listening to taking a part. When we concluded it, Jessie said it was much prettier in her native tongue, and sung a verse in her own language. She said the governor of the fort, who spoke Indian as well as English, had arranged the words for it, and when she was a child in his family, she learned it. "Listen,"

said she, "what is that?"

It was Jackson playing on the key-bugle. Oh, how gloriously it sounded, as its notes fell on the ear, mellowed and softened by the distance. When Englishmen talk of the hunters' horn in the morning, they don't know what they are a saying of. It's well enough I do suppose in the field, as it wakes the drowsy sportsman, and reminds him that there is a hard day's ride before him. But the lake and the forest is nature's amphitheatre, and it is at home there. It won't speak as it can do at all times and in all places; but it gives its whole soul out in the woods; and the echoes love it, and the mountains wave their plumes of pines to it, as if they wanted to be wooed by its clear, sweet, powerful notes.1 All nature listens to it, and keeps silence, while it lifts its voice on high. The breeze wafts its music on its wings, as if proud of its trust; and the lake lies still, and pants like a thing of life, as if its heart beat to its tones. The birds are all hushed, as if afraid to disturb it; and the deer pause, and listen, and gaze on the skies, as if the music came from heaven.

Money only can move some men, and a white heat alone dissolve stones.

But he who has ever heard the bugle, and is not inspired by it, has no divinity within him. The body is there, but the soul is wanting.

1 This inflated pa.s.sage, and some other similar ones, are extremely characteristic of Americans in the same station of life as Slick. From the use of superlative expressions in their conversation, they naturally adopt an exaggerative style in writing, and the minor poets and provincial orators of the Republic are distinguished for this hyperbolical tone. In Great Britain they would be admired by the Irish; on the Continent, by the Gascons. If Mr Slick were not affected by this weakness himself, he would be among the first to detect and ridicule it in others.

"Go on, Jackson, I will forgive your twaddle about sargeant M'Clure, the stroke of the sun, the trooper's helmet, and the night among the wolves. I will listen to your old soldier's stories all night, only go on and play for me. Give me that simple air again. Let me drink it in with my ears, till my heart is full. No grace notes, no tricks of the band-master's, no flourishes; let it be simple and natural. Let it suit us, and the place we are in, for it is the voice of our common parent, nature." Ah, he didn't hear me, and he ceased.

"Jessie, dear, ain't that beautiful?" said I.

"Oh," she said (and she clasped her hands hard), "it is like the sound of a spirit speaking from above."

"Imitate it," said I.

She knew the air, it was a Scotch one; and their music is the most touching, because the most simple, I know.

Squire, you will think I am getting spooney, but I ain't. You know how fond I am of nature, and always was; but I suppose you will think if I ain't talking Turkey, that I am getting crankey, when I tell you an idea that came into my mind just then. She imitated it in the most perfect manner possible. Her clear, sweet, mellow, but powerful notes, never charmed me so before. I thought it sounded like a maiden, answering her lover. One was a masculine, the other a female voice.

The only difference was in the force, but softness was common to both.

Can I ever forget the enchantment of that day?

"Dear Jessie," said I, "you and your friend are just formed for each other. How happy you could make him."

"Who?" said she, and there was no affectation in the question. She knew not the import of that word. "What do you mean?"