Books: The Writings of John Burroughs
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John Burroughs >> The Writings of John Burroughs
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But what is that black speck creeping across that cleared field
near the top of the mountain at the head of the valley, three
quarters of a mile away? It is like a fly moving across an
illuminated surface. A distant mellow bay floats to us, and we
know it is the hound. He picked up the trail of the fox half an
hour since, where he had crossed the ridge early in the morning,
and now he has routed him and Reynard is steering for the Big
Mountain. We press on and attain the shoulder of the range, where
we strike a trail two or three days old of some former hunters,
which leads us into the woods along the side of the mountain. We
are on the first plateau before the summit; the snow partly
supports us, but when it gives way and we sound it with our legs,
we find it up to our hips. Here we enter a white world indeed.
It is like some conjurer's trick. The very trees have turned to
snow. The smallest branch is like a cluster of great white
antlers. The eye is bewildered by the soft fleecy labyrinth before
it. On the lower ranges the forests were entirely bare, but now we
perceive the summit of every mountain about us runs up into a kind
of arctic region where the trees are loaded with snow. The
beginning of this colder zone is sharply marked all around the
horizon; the line runs as level as the shore line of a lake or sea;
indeed, a warmer aerial sea fills all the valleys, submerging the
lower peaks, and making white islands of all the higher ones. The
branches bend with the rime. The winds have not shaken it down.
It adheres to them like a growth. On examination I find the
branches coated with ice, from which shoot slender spikes and
needles that penetrate and hold the cord of snow. It is a new kind
of foliage wrought by the frost and the clouds, and it obscures the
sky, and fills the vistas of the woods nearly as much as the myriad
leaves of summer. The sun blazes, the sky is without a cloud or a
film, yet we walk in a soft white shade. A gentle breeze was
blowing on the open crest of the mountain, but one could carry a
lighted candle through these snow-curtained and snow-canopied
chambers. How shall we see the fox if the hound drives him through
this white obscurity? But we listen in vain for the voice of the
dog and press on. Hares' tracks were numerous. Their great soft
pads had left their imprint everywhere, sometimes showing a clear
leap of ten feet. They had regular circuits which we crossed at
intervals. The woods were well suited to them, low and dense, and,
as we saw, liable at times to wear a livery whiter than their own.
The mice, too, how thick their tracks were, that of the white-
footed mouse being most abundant; but occasionally there was a much
finer track, with strides or leaps scarcely more than an inch
apart. This is perhaps the little shrew-mouse of the woods, the
body not more than an inch and a half long, the smallest mole or
mouse kind known to me. Once, while encamping in the woods, one of
these tiny shrews got into an empty pail standing in camp, and died
before morning, either from the cold, or in despair of ever getting
out of the pail.
At one point, around a small sugar maple, the mice-tracks are
unusually thick. It is doubtless their granary; they have beech-
nuts stored there, I'll warrant. There are two entrances to the
cavity of the tree,--one at the base, and one seven or eight feet
up. At the upper one, which is only just the size of a mouse, a
squirrel has been trying to break in. He has cut and chiseled the
solid wood to the depth of nearly an inch, and his chips strew the
snow all about. He knows what is in there, and the mice know that
he knows; hence their apparent consternation. They have rushed
wildly about over the snow, and, I doubt not, have given the
piratical red squirrel a piece of their minds. A few yards away
the mice have a hole down into the snow, which perhaps leads to
some snug den under the ground. Hither they may have been slyly
removing their stores while the squirrel was at work with his back
turned. One more night and he will effect an entrance: what a good
joke upon him if he finds the cavity empty! These native mice are
very provident, and, I imagine, have to take many precautions to
prevent their winter stores being plundered by the squirrels, who
live, as it were, from hand to mouth.
We see several fresh fox-tracks, and wish for the hound, but there
are no tidings of him. After half an hour's floundering and
cautiously picking our way through the woods, we emerge into a
cleared field that stretches up from the valley below, and just
laps over the back of the mountain. It is a broad belt of white
that drops down and down till it joins other fields that sweep
along the base of the mountain, a mile away. To the east, through
a deep defile in the mountains, a landscape in an adjoining county
lifts itself up, like a bank of white and gray clouds.
When the experienced fox-hunter comes out upon such an eminence as
this, he always scrutinizes the fields closely that lie beneath
him, and it many times happens that his sharp eye detects Reynard
asleep upon a rock or a stone wall, in which case, if he be armed
with a rifle and his dog be not near, the poor creature never
wakens from his slumber. The fox nearly always takes his nap in
the open fields, along the sides of the ridges, or under the
mountain, where he can look down upon the busy farms beneath and
hear their many sounds, the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle,
the cackling of hens, the voices of men and boys, or the sound of
travel upon the highway. It is on that side, too, that he keeps
the sharpest lookout, and the appearance of the hunter above and
behind him is always a surprise. We pause here, and, with
alert ears turned toward the Big Mountain in front of us, listen
for the dog. But not a sound is heard. A flock of snow buntings
pass high above us, uttering their contented twitter, and their
white forms seen against the intense blue give the impression of
large snowflakes drifting across the sky. I hear a purple finch,
too, and the feeble lisp of the redpoll. A shrike (the first I
have seen this season) finds occasion to come this way also. He
alights on the tip of a dry limb, and from his perch can see into
the valley on both sides of the mountain. He is prowling about for
chickadees, no doubt, a troop of which I saw coming through the
wood. When pursued by the shrike, the chickadee has been seen to
take refuge in a squirrel-hole in a tree. Hark! Is that the
hound, or doth expectation mock the eager ear? With open mouths
and bated breaths we listen. Yes, it is old "Singer;" he is
bringing the fox over the top of the range toward Butt End, the
ULTIMA THULE of the hunters' tramps in this section. In a moment
or two the dog is lost to hearing again. We wait for his second
turn; then for his third.
"He is playing about the summit," says my companion.
"Let us go there," say I, and we are off.
More dense snow-hung woods beyond the clearing where we begin our
ascent of the Big Mountain,--a chief that carries the range up
several hundred feet higher than the part we have thus far
traversed. We are occasionally to our hips in the snow, but for
the most part the older stratum, a foot or so down, bears us; up
and up we go into the dim, muffled solitudes, our hats and coats
powdered like millers'. A half-hour's heavy tramping brings us to
the broad, level summit, and to where the fox and hound have
crossed and recrossed many times. As we are walking along
discussing the matter, we suddenly hear the dog coming straight on
to us. The woods are so choked with snow that we do not hear him
till he breaks up from under the mountain within a hundred yards of
us.
"We have turned the fox!" we both exclaim, much put out.
Sure enough, we have. The dog appears in sight, is puzzled a
moment, then turns sharply to the left, and is lost to eye and to
ear as quickly as if he had plunged into a cave. The woods are,
indeed, a kind of cave,--a cave of alabaster, with the sun shining
upon it. We take up positions and wait. These old hunters know
exactly where to stand.
"If the fox comes back," said my companion, "he will cross up there
or down here," indicating two points not twenty rods asunder.
We stood so that each commanded one of the runways indicated. How
light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig
beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up
a great fuss and clatter,--all for my benefit, I suspected. All
about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It
was a cemetery of drift boulders. There! that is the hound. Does
his voice come across the valley from the spur off against us, or
is it on our side down under the mountain? After an interval, just
as I am thinking the dog is going away from us along the opposite
range, his voice comes up astonishingly near. A mass of snow falls
from a branch, and makes one start; but it is not the fox. Then
through the white vista below me I catch a glimpse of something red
or yellow, yellowish red or reddish yellow; it emerges from the
lower ground, and, with an easy, jaunty air, draws near. I am
ready and just in the mood to make a good shot. The fox stops just
out of range and listens for the hound. He looks as bright as an
autumn leaf upon the spotless surface. Then he starts on, but he
is not coming to me, he is going to the other man. Oh, foolish
fox, you are going straight into the jaws of death! My comrade
stands just there beside that tree. I would gladly have given
Reynard the wink, or signaled to him, if I could. It did seem a
pity to shoot him, now he was out of my reach. I cringe for him,
when crack goes the gun! The fox squalls, picks himself up, and
plunges over the brink of the mountain. The hunter has not missed
his aim, but the oil in his gun, he says, has weakened the strength
of his powder. The hound, hearing the report, comes like a
whirlwind and is off in hot pursuit. Both fox and dog now bleed,--
the dog at his heels, the fox from his wounds.
In a few minutes there came up from under the mountain that long,
peculiar bark which the hound always makes when he has run the fox
in, or when something new and extraordinary has happened. In this
instance he said plainly enough, "The race is up, the coward has
taken to his hole, ho-o-o-le." Plunging down in the direction of
the sound, the snow literally to our waists, we were soon at the
spot, a great ledge thatched over with three or four feet of snow.
The dog was alternately licking his heels and whining and berating
the fox. The opening into which the latter had fled was partially
closed, and, as I scraped out and cleared away the snow, I thought
of the familiar saying, that so far as the sun shines in, the snow
will blow in. The fox, I suspect, has always his house of refuge,
or knows at once where to flee to if hard pressed. This place
proved to be a large vertical seam in the rock, into which the dog,
on a little encouragement from his master, made his way. I thrust
my head into the ledge's mouth, and in the dim light watched the
dog. He progressed slowly and cautiously till only his bleeding
heels were visible. Here some obstacle impeded him a few moments,
when he entirely disappeared and was presently face to face with
the fox and engaged in mortal combat with him. It is a fierce
encounter there beneath the rocks, the fox silent, the dog very
vociferous. But after a time the superior weight and strength of
the latter prevails and the fox is brought to light nearly dead.
Reynard winks and eyes me suspiciously, as I stroke his head and
praise his heroic defense; but the hunter quickly and mercifully
puts an end to his fast-ebbing life. His canine teeth seem
unusually large and formidable, and the dog bears the marks of them
in many deep gashes upon his face and nose. His pelt is quickly
stripped off, revealing his lean, sinewy form.
The fox was not as poor in flesh as I expected to see him, though
I'll warrant he had tasted very little food for days, perhaps for
weeks. How his great activity and endurance can be kept up, on the
spare diet he must of necessity be confined to, is a mystery.
Snow, snow everywhere, for weeks and for months, and intense cold,
and no henroost accessible, and no carcass of sheep or pig in the
neighborhood! The hunter, tramping miles and leagues through his
haunts, rarely sees any sign of his having caught anything.
Rarely, though, in the course of many winters, he may have seen
evidence of his having surprised a rabbit or a partridge in the
woods. He no doubt at this season lives largely upon the memory
(or the fat) of the many good dinners he had in the plentiful
summer and fall.
As we crossed the mountain on our return, we saw at one point
blood-stains upon the snow, and, as the fox-tracks were very thick
on and about it, we concluded that a couple of males had had an
encounter there, and a pretty sharp one. Reynard goes a-wooing in
February, and it is to be presumed that, like other dogs, he is a
jealous lover. A crow had alighted and examined the blood-stains,
and now, if he will look a little farther along, upon a flat rock
he will find the flesh he was looking for. Our hound's nose was so
blunted now, speaking without metaphor, that he would not look at
another trail, but hurried home to rest upon his laurels.
A POTOMAC SKETCH
While on a visit to Washington in January, 1878, I went on an
expedition down the Potomac with a couple of friends to shoot
ducks. We left on the morning boat that makes daily trips to and
from Mount Vernon. The weather was chilly and the sky threatening.
The clouds had a singular appearance; they were boat-shaped, with
well-defined keels. I have seldom known such clouds to bring rain;
they are simply the fleet of Æolus, and so it proved on this
occasion, for they gradually dispersed or faded out and before noon
the sun was shining.
We saw numerous flocks of ducks on the passage down, and saw a gun
(the man was concealed) shoot some from a "blind" near Fort
Washington. Opposite Mount Vernon, on the flats, there was a large
"bed" of ducks. I thought the word a good one to describe a long
strip of water thickly planted with them. One of my friends was a
member of the Washington and Mount Vernon Ducking Club, which has
its camp and fixtures just below the Mount Vernon landing; he was
an old ducker. For my part, I had never killed a duck,--except
with an axe,--nor have I yet.
We made our way along the beach from the landing, over piles of
driftwood, and soon reached the quarters, a substantial building,
fitted up with a stove, bunks, chairs, a table, culinary utensils,
crockery, etc., with one corner piled full of decoys. There were
boats to row in and boxes to shoot from, and I felt sure we should
have a pleasant time, whether we got any ducks or not. The weather
improved hourly, till in the afternoon a well-defined installment
of the Indian summer, that had been delayed somewhere, settled down
upon the scene; this lasted during our stay of two days. The river
was placid, even glassy, the air richly and deeply toned with haze,
and the sun that of the mellowest October. "The fairer the
weather, the fewer the ducks," said one of my companions. "But
this is better than ducks," I thought, and prayed that it might
last.
Then there was something pleasing to the fancy in being so near to
Mount Vernon. It formed a-sort of rich, historic background to our
flitting and trivial experiences. Just where the eye of the great
Captain would perhaps first strike the water as he came out in the
morning to take a turn up and down his long piazza, the Club had
formerly had a "blind," but the ice of a few weeks before our visit
had carried it away. A little lower down, and in full view from his
bedroom window, was the place where the shooting from the boxes was
usually done.
The duck is an early bird, and not much given to wandering about in
the afternoon; hence it was thought not worth while to put out the
decoys till the next morning. We would spend the afternoon roaming
inland in quest of quail, or rabbits, or turkeys (for a brood of
the last were known to lurk about the woods back there). It was a
delightful afternoon's tramp through oak woods, pine barrens, and
half-wild fields. We flushed several quail that the dog should
have pointed, and put a rabbit to rout by a well-directed
broadside, but brought no game to camp. We kicked about an old
bushy clearing, where my friends had shot a wild turkey
Thanksgiving Day, but the turkey could not be started again. One
shooting had sufficed for it. We crossed or penetrated extensive
pine woods that had once (perhaps in Washington's time) been
cultivated fields; the mark of the plow was still clearly visible.
The land had been thrown into ridges, after the manner of English
fields, eight or ten feet wide, with a deep dead furrow between
them for purposes of drainage. The pines were scrubby,--what are
known as the loblolly pines,--and from ten to twelve inches through
at the butt. In a low bottom, among some red cedars, I saw robins
and several hermit thrushes, besides the yellow-rumped warbler.
That night, as the sun went down on the one hand, the full moon
rose up on the other, like the opposite side of an enormous scale.
The river, too, was presently brimming with the flood tide. It
was so still one could have carried a lighted candle from shore to
shore. In a little skiff, we floated and paddled up under the
shadow of Mount Vernon and into the mouth of a large creek that
flanks it on the left. In the profound hush of things, every sound
on either shore was distinctly heard. A large bed of ducks were
feeding over on the Maryland side, a mile or more away, and the
multitudinous sputtering and shuffling of their bills in the water
sounded deceptively near. Silently we paddled in that direction.
When about half a mile from them, all sound of feeding suddenly
ceased; then, after a time, as we kept on, there was a great clamor
of wings, and the whole bed appeared to take flight. We paused and
listened, and presently heard them take to the water again, far
below and beyond us. We loaded a boat with the decoys that night,
and in the morning, on the first sign of day, towed a box out in
position, and anchored it, and disposed the decoys about it. Two
hundred painted wooden ducks, each anchored by a small weight that
was attached by a cord to the breast, bowed and sidled and rode the
water, and did everything but feed, in a bed many yards long. The
shooting-box is a kind of coffin, in which the gunner is interred
amid the decoys,--buried below the surface of the water, and
invisible, except from a point above him. The box has broad canvas
wings, that unfold and spread out upon the surface of the water,
four or five feet each way. These steady it, and keep the ripples
from running in when there is a breeze. Iron decoys sit upon these
wings and upon the edge of the box, and sink it to the required
level, so that, when everything is completed and the gunner is in
position, from a distance or from the shore one sees only a large
bed of ducks, with the line a little more pronounced in the centre,
where the sportsman lies entombed, to be quickly resurrected when
the game appears. He lies there stark and stiff upon his back,
like a marble effigy upon a tomb, his gun by his side, with barely
room to straighten himself in, and nothing to look at but the sky
above him. His companions on shore keep a lookout, and, when ducks
are seen on the wing, cry out, "Mark, coming up," or "Mark, coming
down," or, "Mark, coming in," as the case may be. If they decoy,
the gunner presently hears the whistle of their wings, or maybe he
catches a glimpse of them over the rim of the box as they circle
about. Just as they let down their feet to alight, he is expected
to spring up and pour his broadside into them. A boat from shore
comes and picks up the game, if there is any to pick up.
The club-man, by common consent, was the first in the box that
morning; but only a few ducks were moving, and he had lain there
an hour before we marked a solitary bird approaching, and, after
circling over the decoys, alighting a little beyond them. The
sportsman sprang up as from the bed of the river, and the duck
sprang up at the same time, and got away under fire. After a while
my other companion went out; but the ducks passed by on the other
side, and he had no shots. In the afternoon, remembering the
robins, and that robins are game when one's larder is low, I set
out alone for the pine bottoms, a mile or more distant. When one
is loaded for robins, he may expect to see turkeys, and VICE VERSA.
As I was walking carelessly on the borders of an old brambly field
that stretched a long distance beside the pine woods, I heard a
noise in front of me, and, on looking in that direction, saw a
veritable turkey, with a spread tail, leaping along at a rapid
rate. She was so completely the image of the barnyard fowl that I
was slow to realize that here was the most notable game of that
part of Virginia, for the sight of which sportsmen's eyes do water.
As she was fairly on the wing, I sent my robin-shot after her; but
they made no impression, and I stood and watched with great
interest her long, level flight. As she neared the end of the
clearing, she set her wings and sailed straight into the corner of
the woods. I found no robins, but went back satisfied with having
seen the turkey, and having had an experience that I knew would
stir up the envy and the disgust of my companions. They listened
with ill-concealed impatience, stamped the ground a few times,
uttered a vehement protest against the caprice of fortune that
always puts the game in the wrong place or the gun in the wrong
hands, and rushed off in quest of that turkey. She was not where
they looked, of course; and, on their return about sundown, when
they had ceased to think about their game, she flew out of the top
of a pine-tree not thirty rods from camp, and in full view of them,
but too far off for a shot.
In my wanderings that afternoon, I came upon two negro shanties in
a small triangular clearing in the woods; no road but only a
footpath led to them. Three or four children, the eldest a girl of
twelve, were about the door of one of them. I approached and asked
for a drink of water. The girl got a glass and showed me to the
spring near by.
"We's grandmover's daughter's chilern," she said, in reply to
my inquiry. Their mother worked in Washington for "eighteen cents
a month," and their grandmother took care of them.
Then I thought I would pump her about the natural history of the
place.
"What was there in these woods,--what kind of animals,--any? "
"Oh, yes, sah, when we first come here to live in dese bottoms de
possums and foxes and things were so thick you could hardly go out-
o'-doors." A fox had come along one day right where her mother was
washing, and they used to catch the chickens "dreadful."
"Were there any snakes?"
"Yes, sah; black snakes, moccasins, and doctors."
The doctor, she said, was a powerful ugly customer; it would get
right hold of your leg as you were passing along, and whip and
sting you to death. I hoped I should not meet any "doctors."
I asked her if they caught any rabbits.
"Oh, yes, we catches dem in 'gums.' "
"What are gums?" I asked.
"See dat down dare? Dat's a 'gum.' "
I saw a rude box-trap made of rough boards. It seems these traps,
and many other things, such as beehives, and tubs, etc., are
frequently made in the South from a hollow gum-tree; hence the name
gum has come to have a wide application.
The ducks flew quite briskly that night; I could hear the whistle
of their wings as I stood upon the shore indulging myself in
listening. The ear loves a good field as well as the eye, and the
night is the best time to listen, to put your ear to Nature's
keyhole and see what the whisperings and the preparations mean.
"Dark night, that from the eye his
function takes,
The ear more quick of apprehension
makes,"
says Shakespeare. I overheard some muskrats engaged in a very
gentle and affectionate jabber beneath a rude pier of brush and
earth upon which I was standing. The old, old story was evidently
being rehearsed under there, but the occasional splashing of the
ice-cold water made it seem like very chilling business; still we
all know it is not. Our decoys had not been brought in, and I
distinctly heard some ducks splash in among them. The sound of
oar-locks in the distance next caught my ears. They were so far
away that it took some time to decide whether or not they were
approaching. But they finally grew more distinct,--the steady,
measured beat of an oar in a wooden lock, a very pleasing sound
coming over still, moonlit waters. It was an hour before the boat
emerged into view and passed my post. A white, misty obscurity
began to gather over the waters, and in the morning this had grown
to be a dense fog. By early dawn one of my friends was again in
the box, and presently his gun went bang! bang! then bang! came
again from the second gun he had taken with him, and we imagined
the water strewn with ducks. But he reported only one. It floated
to him and was picked up, so we need not go out. In the dimness
and silence we rowed up and down the shore in hopes of starting up
a stray duck that might possibly decoy. We saw many objects that
simulated ducks pretty well through the obscurity, but they failed
to take wing on our approach. The most pleasing thing we saw was a
large, rude boat, propelled by four colored oarsmen. It looked as
if it might have come out of some old picture. Two oarsmen were
seated in the bows, pulling, and two stood up in the stern, facing
their companions, each working a long oar, bending and recovering
and uttering a low, wild chant. The spectacle emerged from the fog
on the one hand and plunged into it on the other.
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