Books: The Writings of John Burroughs
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John Burroughs >> The Writings of John Burroughs
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A lady once asked me if there was any individuality among the
birds, or if those of the same kind were as near alike as two peas.
I was obliged to answer that to the eye those of the same species
were as near alike as two peas, but that in their songs there were
often marks of originality. Caged or domesticated birds develop
notes and traits of their own, and among the more familiar orchard
and garden birds one may notice the same tendency. I observe a
great variety of songs, and even qualities of voice, among the
orioles and among the song sparrows. On this trip my ear was
especially attracted to some striking and original sparrow songs.
At one point I was half afraid I had let pass an opportunity to
identify a new warbler, but finally concluded it was a song
sparrow. On another occasion I used to hear day after day a sparrow
that appeared to have some organic defect in its voice: part of its
song was scarcely above a whisper, as if the bird was suffering
from a very bad cold. I have heard a bobolink and a hermit thrush
with similar defects of voice. I have heard a robin with a part of
the whistle of the quail in his song. It was out of time and out of
tune, but the robin seemed insensible of the incongruity, and sang
as loudly and as joyously as any of his mates. A catbird will
sometimes show a special genius for mimicry, and I have known one
to suggest very plainly some notes of the bobolink.
There are numerous long covered bridges spanning the Delaware, and
under some of these I saw the cliff swallow at home, the nests
being fastened to the under sides of the timbers,--as it were,
suspended from the ceiling instead of being planted upon the
shelving or perpendicular side, as is usual with them. To have laid
the foundation, indeed, to have sprung the vault downward and
finished it successfully, must have required special engineering
skill. I had never before seen or heard of these nests being so
placed. But birds are quick to adjust their needs to the exigencies
of any case. Not long before, I had seen in a deserted house, on
the head of the Rondout, the chimney swallows entering the chamber
through a stove-pipe hole in the roof, and gluing their nests to
the sides of the rafters, like the barn swallows.
I was now, on the third day, well down in the wilds of Colchester,
with a current that made between two and three miles an hour,--just
a summer idler's pace. The atmosphere of the river had improved
much since the first day,--was, indeed, without taint,--and the
water was sweet and good. There were farmhouses at intervals of a
mile or so; but the amount of tillable land in the river valley or
on the adjacent mountains was very small. Occasionally there would
be forty or fifty acres of flat, usually in grass or corn, with a
thrifty-looking farmhouse. One could see how surely the land made
the house and its surrounding; good land bearing good buildings,
and poor land poor
In mid-forenoon I reached the long placid eddy at Downsville, and
here again fell in with two boys. They were out paddling about in a
boat when I drew near, and they evidently regarded me in the light
of a rare prize which fortune had wafted them.
"Ain't you glad we come, Benny?" I heard one of them observe to the
other, as they were conducting me to the best place to land. They
were bright, good boys, off the same piece as my acquaintances of
the day before, and about the same ages,-- differing only in being
village boys. With what curiosity they looked me over! Where had I
come from; where was I going; how long had I been on the way; who
built my boat; was I a carpenter, to build such a neat craft, etc.?
They never had seen such a traveler before. Had I had no mishaps?
And then they bethought them of the dangerous passes that awaited
me, and in good faith began to warn and advise me. They had heard
the tales of raftsmen, and had conceived a vivid idea of the perils
of the river below, gauging their notions of it from the spring and
fall freshets tossing about the heavy and cumbrous rafts. There was
a whirlpool, a rock eddy, and a binocle within a mile. I might be
caught in the binocle, or engulfed in the whirlpool, or smashed up
in the eddy. But I felt much reassured when they told me I had
already passed several whirlpools and rock eddies; but that
terrible binocle,--what was that? I had never heard of such a
monster. Oh, it was a still, miry place at the head of a big eddy.
The current might carry me up there, but I could easily get out
again; the rafts did. But there was another place I must beware of,
where two eddies faced each other; raftsmen were sometimes swept
off there by the oars and drowned. And when I came to rock eddy,
which I would know, because the river divided there (a part of the
water being afraid to risk the eddy, I suppose), I must go ashore
and survey the pass; but in any case it would be prudent to keep to
the left. I might stick on the rift, but that was nothing to being
wrecked upon those rocks. The boys were quite in earnest, and I
told them I would walk up to the village and post some letters to
my friends before I braved all these dangers. So they marched me up
the street, pointing out to their chums what they had found.
"Going way to Phil-- What place is that near where the river goes
into the sea?"
"Philadelphia?"
"Yes; thinks he may go way there. Won't he have fun?"
The boys escorted me about the town, then back to the river, and
got in their boat and came down to the bend, where they could see
me go through the whirlpool and pass the binocle (I am not sure
about the orthography of the word, but I suppose it means a double,
or a sort of mock eddy). I looked back as I shot over the rough
current beside a gentle vortex, and saw them watching me with great
interest. Rock eddy, also, was quite harmless, and I passed it
without any preliminary survey.
I nooned at Sodom, and found good milk in a humble cottage. In the
afternoon I was amused by a great blue heron that kept flying up in
advance of me. Every mile or so, as I rounded some point, I would
come unexpectedly upon him, till finally he grew disgusted with my
silent pursuit, and took a long turn to the left up along the side
of the mountain, and passed back up the river, uttering a hoarse,
low note.
The wind still boded rain, and about four o'clock, announced by
deep-toned thunder and portentous clouds, it began to charge down
the mountain-side in front of me. I ran ashore, covered my traps,
and took my way up through an orchard to a quaint little farmhouse.
But there was not a soul about, outside or in, that I could find,
though the door was unfastened; so I went into an open shed with
the hens, and lounged upon some straw, while the unloosed floods
came down. It was better than boating or fishing. Indeed, there
are few summer pleasures to be placed before that of reclining at
ease directly under a sloping roof, after toil or travel in the
hot sun, and looking out into the rain-drenched air and fields.
It is such a vital yet soothing spectacle. We sympathize with the
earth. We know how good a bath is, and the unspeakable
deliciousness of water to a parched tongue. The office of the
sunshine is slow, subtle, occult, unsuspected; but when the
clouds do their work, the benefaction is so palpable and copious,
so direct and wholesale, that all creatures take note of it, and
for the most part rejoice in it. It is a completion, a
consummation, a paying of a debt with a royal hand; the measure is
heaped and overflowing. It was the simple vapor of water that the
clouds borrowed of the earth; now they pay back more than water:
the drops are charged with electricity and with the gases of the
air, and have new solvent powers. Then, how the slate is sponged
off, and left all clean and new again!
In the shed where I was sheltered were many relics and odds and
ends of the farm. In juxtaposition with two of the most stalwart
wagon or truck wheels I ever looked upon was a cradle of ancient
and peculiar make,--an aristocratic cradle, with high-turned posts
and an elaborately carved and moulded body, that was suspended upon
rods and swung from the top. How I should have liked to hear its
history and the story of the lives it had rocked, as the rain sang
and the boughs tossed without! Above it was the cradle of a phbe-
bird saddled upon a stick that ran behind the rafter; its occupants
had not flown, and its story was easy to read.
Soon after the first shock of the storm was over, and before I
could see breaking sky, the birds tuned up with new ardor,--the
robin, the indigo-bird, the purple finch, the song sparrow, and in
the meadow below the bobolink. The cockerel near me followed suit,
and repeated his refrain till my meditations were so disturbed that
I was compelled to eject him from the cover, albeit he had the best
right there. But he crowed his defiance with drooping tail from the
yard in front. I, too, had mentally crowed over the good fortune
of the shower; but before I closed my eyes that night my crest was
a good deal fallen, and I could have wished the friendly elements
had not squared their accounts quite so readily and uproariously.
The one shower did not exhaust the supply a bit; Nature's hand was
full of trumps yet,--yea, and her sleeve too. I stopped at a
trout brook, which came down out of the mountains on the right, and
took a few trout for my supper; but its current was too roily from
the shower for fly-fishing. Another farmhouse attracted me, but
there was no one at home; so I picked a quart of strawberries in
the meadow in front, not minding the wet grass, and about six
o'clock, thinking another storm that had been threatening on my
right had miscarried, I pushed off, and went floating down into the
deepening gloom of the river valley. The mountains, densely
wooded from base to summit, shut in the view on every hand. They
cut in from the right and from the left, one ahead of the other,
matching like the teeth of an enormous trap; the river was caught
and bent, but not long detained, by them. Presently I saw the rain
creeping slowly over them in my rear, for the wind had changed; but
I apprehended nothing but a moderate sundown drizzle, such as we
often get from the tail end of a shower, and drew up in the eddy of
a big rock under an overhanging tree till it should have passed.
But it did not pass; it thickened and deepened, and reached a
steady pour by the time I had calculated the sun would be gilding
the mountain-tops. I had wrapped my rubber coat about my blankets
and groceries, and bared my back to the storm. In sullen silence I
saw the night settling down and the rain increasing; my roof-tree
gave way, and every leaf poured its accumulated drops upon me.
There were streams and splashes where before there had been little
more than a mist. I was getting well soaked and uncomplimentary in
my remarks on the weather. A saucy catbird, near by, flirted and
squealed very plainly, "There! there! What did I tell you! what
did I tell you! Pretty pickle! pretty pickle! pretty pickle to be
in!" But I had been in worse pickles, though if the water had been
salt, my pickling had been pretty thorough. Seeing the wind was in
the northeast, and that the weather had fairly stolen a march on
me, I let go my hold of the tree, and paddled rapidly to the
opposite shore, which was low and pebbly, drew my boat up on a
little peninsula, turned her over upon a spot which I cleared of
its coarser stone, propped up one end with the seat, and crept
beneath. I would now test the virtues of my craft as a roof, and I
found she was without flaw, though she was pretty narrow. The
tension of her timber was such that the rain upon her bottom made a
low, musical hum.
Crouched on my blankets and boughs,--for I had gathered a good
supply of the latter before the rain overtook me,--and dry only
about my middle, I placidly took life as it came. A great blue
heron flew by, and let off something like ironical horse laughter.
Before it became dark I proceeded to eat my supper,--my berries,
but not my trout. What a fuss we make about the "hulls" upon
strawberries! We are hypercritical; we may yet be glad to dine off
the hulls alone. Some people see something to pick and carp at
in every good that comes to them; I was thankful that I had the
berries, and resolutely ignored their little scalloped ruffles,
which I found pleased the eye and did not disturb the palate.
When bedtime arrived, I found undressing a little awkward, my berth
was so low; there was plenty of room in the aisle, and the other
passengers were nowhere to be seen, but I did not venture out. It
rained nearly all night, but the train made good speed, and reached
the land of daybreak nearly on time. The water in the river had
crept up during the night to within a few inches of my boat, but I
rolled over and took another nap, all the same. Then I arose, had a
delicious bath in the sweet, swift-running current, and turned my
thoughts toward breakfast. The making of the coffee was the only
serious problem. With everything soaked and a fine rain still
falling, how shall one build a fire? I made my way to a little
island above in quest of driftwood. Before I had found the wood I
chanced upon another patch of delicious wild strawberries, and took
an appetizer of them out of hand. Presently I picked up a yellow
birch stick the size of my arm. The wood was decayed, but the bark
was perfect. I broke it in two, punched out the rotten wood, and
had the bark intact. The fatty or resinous substance in this bark
preserves it, and makes it excellent kindling. With some seasoned
twigs and a scrap of paper I soon had a fire going that answered my
every purpose. More berries were picked while the coffee was
brewing, and the breakfast was a success.
The camper-out often finds himself in what seems a distressing
predicament to people seated in their snug, well-ordered houses;
but there is often a real satisfaction when things come to their
worst,--a satisfaction in seeing what a small matter it is, after
all; that one is really neither sugar nor salt, to be afraid of the
wet; and that life is just as well worth living beneath a scow or a
dug-out as beneath the highest and broadest roof in Christendom.
By ten o'clock it became necessary to move, on account of the rise
of the water, and as the rain had abated, I picked up and continued
my journey. Before long, however, the rain increased again, and I
took refuge in a barn. The snug, tree-embowered farmhouse looked
very inviting, just across the road from the barn; but as no one
was about, and no faces appeared at the window that I might judge
of the inmates, I contented myself with the hospitality the barn
offered, filling my pockets with some dry birch shavings I found
there where the farmer had made an ox-yoke, against the needs of
the next kindling.
After an hour's detention I was off again. I stopped at Baxter's
Brook, which flows hard by the classic hamlet of Harvard, and tried
for trout, but with poor success, as I did not think it worth while
to go far upstream.
At several points I saw rafts of hemlock lumber tied to the shore,
ready to take advantage of the first freshet. Rafting is an
important industry for a hundred miles or more along the Delaware.
The lumbermen sometimes take their families or friends, and have a
jollification all the way to Trenton or to Philadelphia. In some
places the speed is very great, almost equaling that of an express
train. The passage of such places as Cochecton Falls and "Foul
Rift" is attended with no little danger. The raft is guided by two
immense oars, one before and one behind. I frequently saw these
huge implements in the driftwood alongshore, suggesting some
colossal race of men. The raftsmen have names of their own. From
the upper Delaware, where I had set in, small rafts are run down
which they call "colts." They come frisking down at a lively pace.
At Hancock they usually couple two rafts together, when I suppose
they have a span of colts; or do two colts make one horse? Some
parts of the framework of the raft they call "grubs;" much depends
upon these grubs. The lumbermen were and are a hardy, virile race.
The Hon. Charles Knapp, of Deposit, now eighty-three years of age,
but with the look and step of a man of sixty, told me he had stood
nearly all one December day in the water to his waist,
reconstructing his raft, which had gone to pieces on the head of an
island. Mr. Knapp had passed the first half of his life in
Colchester and Hancock, and, although no sportsman, had once taken
part in a great bear hunt there. The bear was an enormous one, and
was hard pressed by a gang of men and dogs. Their muskets and
assaults upon the beast with clubs had made no impression. Mr.
Knapp saw where the bear was coming, and he thought he would show
them how easy it was to dispatch a bear with a club, if you only
knew where to strike. He had seen how quickly the largest hog
would wilt beneath a slight blow across the "small of the back."
So, armed with an immense handspike, he took up a position by a
large rock that the bear must pass. On she came, panting and nearly
exhausted, and at the right moment down came the club with great
force upon the small of her back. "If a fly had alighted upon her,"
said Mr. Knapp, "I think she would have paid just as much attention
to it as she did to me."
Early in the afternoon I encountered another boy, Henry Ingersoll,
who was so surprised by my sudden and unwonted appearance that he
did not know east from west. "Which way is west?" I inquired, to
see if my own head was straight on the subject.
"That way," he said, indicating east within a few degrees.
"You are wrong," I replied. "Where does the sun rise?"
"There," he said, pointing almost in the direction he had pointed
before.
"But does not the sun rise in the east here as well as elsewhere?"
I rejoined.
"Well, they call that west, anyhow."
But Henry's needle was subjected to a disturbing influence just
then. His house was near the river, and he was its sole guardian
and keeper for the time; his father had gone up to the next
neighbor's (it was Sunday), and his sister had gone with the
schoolmistress down the road to get black birch. He came out in the
road, with wide eyes, to view me as I passed, when I drew rein, and
demanded the points of the compass, as above. Then I shook my sooty
pail at him and asked for milk. Yes, I could have some milk, but I
would have to wait till his sister came back; after he had
recovered a little, he concluded he could get it. He came for my
pail, and then his boyish curiosity appeared. My story interested
him immensely. He had seen twelve summers, but he had been
only four miles from home up and down the river : he had been down
to the East Branch, and he had been up to Trout Brook. He took a
pecuniary interest in me. What did my pole cost? What my rubber
coat, and what my revolver? The latter he must take in his hand;
he had never seen such a thing to shoot with before in HIS life,
etc. He thought I might make the trip cheaper and easier by stage
and by the cars. He went to school: there were six scholars in
summer, one or two more in winter. The population is not crowded
in the town of Hancock, certainly, and never will be. The people
live close to the bone, as Thoreau would say, or rather close to
the stump. Many years ago the young men there resolved upon having
a ball. They concluded not to go to a hotel, on account of the
expense, and so chose a private house. There was a man in the
neighborhood who could play the fife; he offered to furnish the
music for seventy-five cents. But this was deemed too much, so one
of the party agreed to whistle. History does not tell how many
beaux there were bent upon this reckless enterprise, but there were
three girls. For refreshments they bought a couple of gallons of
whiskey and a few pounds of sugar. When the spree was over, and the
expenses were reckoned up, there was a shilling--a York shilling--
apiece to pay. Some of the revelers were dissatisfied with this
charge, and intimated that the managers had not counted themselves
in, but taxed the whole expense upon the rest of the party.
As I moved on, I saw Henry's sister and the schoolmistress picking
their way along the muddy road near the river's bank. One of them
saw me, and, dropping her skirts, said to the other (I could read
the motions), "See that man!" The other lowered her flounces, and
looked up and down the road, then glanced over into the field, and
lastly out upon the river. They paused and had a good look at me,
though I could see that their impulse to run away, like that of a
frightened deer, was strong.
At the East Branch the Big Beaver Kill joins the Delaware, almost
doubling its volume. Here I struck the railroad, the forlorn
Midland, and here another set of men and manners cropped out,--what
may be called the railroad conglomerate overlying this mountain
freestone.
"Where did you steal that boat?" and "What you running away for?"
greeted me from a handcar that went by.
I paused for some time and watched the fish hawks, or ospreys, of
which there were nearly a dozen sailing about above the junction of
the two streams, squealing and diving, and occasionally striking a
fish on the rifts. I am convinced that the fish hawk sometimes
feeds on the wing. I saw him do it on this and on another
occasion. He raises himself by a peculiar motion, and brings his
head and his talons together, and apparently takes a bite of a
fish. While doing this his flight presents a sharply undulating
line; at the crest of each rise the morsel is taken.
In a long, deep eddy under the west shore I came upon a brood of
wild ducks, the hooded merganser. The young were about half grown,
but of course entirely destitute of plumage. They started off at
great speed, kicking the water into foam behind them, the mother
duck keeping upon their flank and rear. Near the outlet of the
pool I saw them go ashore, and I expected they would conceal
themselves in the woods; but as I drew near the place they came
out, and I saw by their motions they were going to make a rush by
me upstream. At a signal from the old one, on they came, and
passed within a few feet of me. It was almost incredible, the
speed they made. Their pink feet were like swiftly revolving
wheels placed a little to the rear; their breasts just skimmed the
surface, and the water was beaten into spray behind them. They had
no need of wings; even the mother bird did not use hers; a
steamboat could hardly have kept up with them. I dropped my paddle
and cheered. They kept the race up for a long distance, and I saw
them making a fresh spirt as I entered upon the rift and dropped
quickly out of sight. I next disturbed an eagle in his meditations
upon a dead treetop, and a cat sprang out of some weeds near the
foot of the tree. Was he watching for puss, while she was watching
for some smaller prey?
I passed Partridge Island--which is or used to be the name of a
post-office--unwittingly, and encamped for the night on an island
near Hawk's Point. I slept in my boat on the beach, and in the
morning my locks were literally wet with the dews of the night, and
my blankets too; so I waited for the sun to dry them. As I was
gathering driftwood for a fire, a voice came over from the shadows
of the east shore: "Seems to me you lay abed pretty late!"
"I call this early," I rejoined, glancing at the sun.
"Wall, it may be airly in the forenoon, but it ain't very airly in
the mornin';" a distinction I was forced to admit. Before I had
reëmbarked some cows came down to the shore, and I watched them
ford the river to the island. They did it with great ease and
precision. I was told they will sometimes, during high water, swim
over to the islands, striking in well upstream, and swimming
diagonally across. At one point some cattle had crossed the river,
and evidently got into mischief, for a large dog rushed them down
the bank into the current, and worried them all the way over, part
of the time swimming and part of the time leaping very high, as a
dog will in deep snow, coming down with a great splash. The cattle
were shrouded with spray as they ran, and altogether it was a novel
picture.
My voyage ended that forenoon at Hancock, and was crowned by a few
idyllic days with some friends in their cottage in the woods by
Lake Oquaga, a body of crystal water on the hills near Deposit, and
a haven as peaceful and perfect as voyager ever came to port in.
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