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m^lje Hit3er0itie lliterature ^erietf

AFOOT AND AFLOAT

BY

JOHN BURROUGHS

WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY
CLIFTON JOHNSON

_e:RO)ergiac:Pre^

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The three papers given in this volume will appeal
especially to the large number of boys and girls who
enjoy stories of boating, camping, and tramping experi-
ences. The first, "A Summer Boating Trip," is from
** Pepacton and Other Sketches ; " the second, " Camp-
ing with the President," is from the " Atlantic Monthly "
for May, 1906; and the third, "A Tramp in the Cat-
skills," is a selection, complete in itself, from " Birch
Browsings" in "Wake-Robin." The biographical
sketch by Clifton Johnson will also be enjoyed by chil-
dren who have become familiar with Burroughs's
writings.

In presenting another volume of Burroughs's essays
in the Riverside Literature Series, the publishers feel
that the reception accorded the previous Burroughs
numbers in this series testifies to the adaptability of
the writings of this nature philosopher to school use.
The desirability of bringing children into that intimate
and sympathetic relationship with nature which per-
vades all of Mr. Burroughs's writings is apparent to
all teachers who recognize the need and the difiiculty
of inculcating a love of nature in their pupils.

CONTENTS

PAOS

Biographical Sketch of John Burkoughs by Cufton
Johnson 1

A Summer Boating Trip 7

Camping with the President 36

A Tramp in the Catskills 72

COPYRIGHT, 1871, 1S81, 1S99, 1907, 1909, AND 1913, BY JOHN BURROUGHS
COPYRIGHT, 1901, 1906, AND 1907, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

JOHN BURROUGHS

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BY CLIFTON JOHNSON

In the town of Roxbury, among the western Catskills,
was born April 3, 1837, John Burroughs. The house in
which he first saw the hght was an unpainted, squarish
structure, only a single story high, with a big chimney
in the middle. This house was removed a few years
later, and a better and somewhat larger one, which still
stands, was built in its place. The situation is very
pleasing. Roundabout is a varied country of heights,
dales, woods and pastures, and cultivated fields. The
dwelling is in a wide upland hollow that falls away to
the east and south into a deep valley, beyond which
rise line on line of great mounding hills. These turn
blue in the distance and look like immense billows
rolling in from a distant ocean.

There were ten children in the Burroughs family,
and John was the seventh of this numerous household.
He was a true country boy, acquainted with all the
hard work and all the pleasures of an old-fashioned
farm life. His people were poor and he had his own
way to make in the world, but the environment was
on the whole a salutarv one.

He has always had a marked affection for the place
of his birth, and he rejoices in the fact that from an
eminence near his present home on the Hudson he can
see mountains that are visible from his native hills.

2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Two or three times every year he goes back to these
hills to renew his youth among the familiar scenes of
his boyhood.

" Johnnv " Burroughs, as he was known to his home
folks and the neighbors, was very like the other young-
sters of the region in his interests, his ways, and his
work. Yet as compared with them he undoubtedly had
a livelier imagination, and things made a keener im-
pression on his mind. In some cases his sensitiveness
was more disturbing than gratifying. When his grand-
father told "spook" stories to the children gathered
around the evening blaze of the kitchen fireplace,
John's hair would almost stand on end and he w^as
afraid of every shadow.

He went to school in the little red schoolhouse across
the valley, and as he grew older he aspired to attend
an academy. But he had to make the opportunity for
himself, and only succeeded in doing so at the age of
seventeen, w-hen he raised the needful money by six
months of teaching. This enabled him in the autumn
of 1854 to enter the Heading Literary Institute at
Ashland. He found the life there enjoyable, but his
funds ran low^ by spring and he was obliged to return
to the farm. Until September he labored among his
native fields, then took up teaching again. When pay
day came he set off for a seminary of some note at
Cooperstown, w^here a single term brought his student
days forever to a close, and after another period of farm
work at home he borrowed a small sum of money and
journeyed to Illinois. Near Freeport he secured a
school at forty dollars a month, w hich was much more
than he could have earned in the East. Yet he gave up
his position at the end of six months. " I came back.'*

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 3

he says, " because of ' the girl I left behind me; ' and it
was pretty hard to stay even as long as I did."

Soon afterward he married. His total capital at the
time was fifty dollars, a sum which was reduced one
fifth by the wedding expenses. For several years he
continued to teach, and at the age of twenty-five we
find him in charge of a school near West Point. Up to
this time his interest in nature and his aptitude for
observation lay dormant. But now it was awakened
by reading a volume of Audubon which chanced to fall
into his hands. That was a revelation, and he went to
the woods with entirely new interest and enthusiasm.
He began at once to get acquainted with the birds, his
vision grew keen and alert, and birds he had passed by
before, he now saw at once.

Meanwhile the Civil War was going on, and it
aroused in Burroughs a strong desire to enlist. He
visited Washington to get a closer view of army life,
but what he saw of it rather damped his military ardor.
It seemed to him that the men were driven about and
herded like cattle; and when a peaceful position in the
Treasury Department was offered him he accepted it,
and for nine years was a Government clerk.

At the Treasury he guarded a vault and kept a record
of the monev that went in or out. The duties were not
arduous, and in his long intervals of leisure his mind
wandered far afield. It dwelt on the charm of flitting
wnngs and bird melodies, on the pleasures of rambling
along country roads and into the woodlands; and, sit-
ting before the Treasury vault, at a high desk and facing
an iron wall he began to write. There was no need for
notes. His memory was all-sufficient, and the result was
the essays which make " W^ake-Robin," — his first book.

4 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

By 1873 Burroughs had had enough of the routine
of a' Government clerkship, and he resigned to become
the receiver of a bank in Middletown, New York.
Later he accepted a position as bank examiner in the
eastern part of the State. But his longing to return to
the soil was growing apace, and presently he bought a
little farm on the west shore of the Hudson. He at once
erected a substantial stone house and started orchards
and vineyards, yet it was not until 1885 that he feU he
could relinquish his Government position and dwell
on his own land with the assurance of a safe support.

He has never been a great traveler. Still, he has
been abroad twice and has recently made a trip to
Alaska. Lesser excursions have taken him to Virginia
and Kentucky, and to Canada, and he has camped in
Maine and the Adirondacks. But the district that he
knows best and that he puts oftenest into his nature
studies is his home country in the Catskills and the
region about his "Riverby" farm. Very little of his
writing, however, has been done in the house in which
he lives. This was never a wholly satisfactory workinf]^
place. He felt he must get away from all conventional-
ities, and he early put up on the outskirts of his vine-
yards a little bark-covered study, to which it has been
his habit to retire for his indoor thinking and writing.
He still uses this study more or less, and often in the
summer evenings sits in an easy chair, under an ay)ple-
tree just outside the door, and listens to the voices of
Nature while he looks off across the Hudson.

But the spot that at present most engages his affec-
tion is a reclaimed woodland swamp, back among
some rocky hills, a mile or two from the river. A few
years ago the swamp was a wild tangle of brush and

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH S

stumps, fallen trees and murky pools. Now it has been
cleared and drained, and the dark forest mould pro-
duces wonderful crops of celery, sweet corn, potatoes,
and other vegetables. On a shoulder of rock near the
swamp borders Burroughs has built a rustic house,
sheathed outside with slabs, and smacking in all its
arrangements of the woodlands and of the days of
pioneering. It has an open fireplace, where the flames
crackle cheerfully on chilly evenings, and over the
fireplace coals most of the cooking is done ; but in really
hot weather an oil stove serves instead.

On the other side of the hollow a delightfully cold
spring bubbles forth, and immediately back of the
house is a natural cavern which makes an ideal storage
place for perishable foods. The descent to the cavern
is made by a rude ladder, and the sight of Burroughs
coming and going between it and the house has a most
suggestive touch of the wild and romantic.

He is often at " Slabsides " — sometimes for weeks
or months at a time, though he always makes daily
visits to the valley to look after the work in his vine-
yards and to visit the post-office at the railway station.
He is a leisurelv man, to whom haste and the nervous
pursuit of wealth or fame are totally foreign. He thor-
oughly enjoys country loitering, and when he gets a
hint of anything interesting or new going on among
the birds and little creatures of the fields, he likes to
stop and investigate. His ears are remarkably quick
and his eyes and sense of smell phenomenally acute,
and much which to most of us would be unperceived
or meaningless he reads as if it were an open book. Best
of all, he has the power of imparting his enjoyment,
and what he writes is full of outdoor fragrance, racy,

6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

piquant, and individual. His snap and vivacity are
wholly unartificial. They are a part of the man — a
man full of imagination and sensitiveness, a philoso-
pher, a humorist, a hater of shams and pretension.
The tenor of his life changes little from year to year,
his affections remain steadfast, and this hardy, gray
poet of things rural will continue, as ever, the warm-
hearted nature enthusiast, and inspirer t>A" the love of
nature in others.

AFOOT AND AFLOAT

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

When one summer day I bethought me of a voyage
down the east or Pepacton branch of the Delaware,
I seemed to want some excuse for the start, some send-
off, some preparation, to give the enterprise genesis
and head. This I found in building my own boat. It
was a happy thought. How else should I have got
under wav, how else should I have raised the breeze ?
The boat-building warmed the blood; it made the
germ take; it whetted my appetite for the voyage.
There is nothing like serving an apprenticeship to for-
tune, like earning the right to your tools. In most
enterprises the temptation is always to begin too far
alons ; we want to start where somebodv else leaves off.
Go back to the stump, and see what an impetus you
get. Those fishermen who wind their own flies before
they go a-fishing, — how they bring in the trout ; and
those hunters who run their own bullets or make their
own cartridges, — the game is already mortgaged to
them.

When my boat was finished — and it was a very
simple affair — I was eager as a boy to be off ; I feared
the river would all run bv before I could wet her bot-
torn in it. This enthusiasm begat great expectations
of the trip. I should surely surprise Nature and win
some new secrets from her. I should glide down noise-
lessly upon her and see what all those willow screens

8 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

and baffling curves concealed. As a fisherman and
pedestrian I had been able to come at the stream only
at certain points: now the most private and secluded
retreats of the nymph would be opened to me; every
bend and eddy, every cove hedged in by swamps or
passage walled in by high alders, would be at the beck
of my paddle.

Whom shall one take with him when he goes a-court-
ing Nature ? This is always a vital question. There
are persons who will stand between you and that which
you seek: they obtrude themselves; they monopolize
your attention; they blunt your sense of the shy, half-
revealed intelligences about you. I want for companion
a dog or a boy, or a person who has the virtues of dogs
and boys, — transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open
sense, and a nameless quality that is akin to trees and
growths and the inarticulate forces of nature. With
him you are alone, and yet have company ; you are free ;
you feel no disturbing element ; the influences of nature
stream through him and around him; he is a good con-
ductor of the subtle fluid. The quality or qualification
I refer to belongs to most persons who spend their lives
in the open air, — to soldiers, hunters, fishers, laborers,
and to artists and poets of the right sort. How full of
it, to choose an illustrious example, was such a man as
Walter Scott!

But no such person came in answer to my prayer, so
I set out alone.

It was fit that I put my boat into the water at Ark-
ville, but it may seem a little incongruous that I should
launch her into Dry Brook; vet Drv Brook is here a
fine large trout stream, and I soon found its waters
were wet enough for all practical purposes. The Dela-

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 9

ware is only one mile distant, and I chose this as the
easiest road from the station to it. A young farmer
helped me carry the boat to the water, but did not stay
to see me off; only some calves feeding alongshore wit-
nessed my embarkation. It would have been a godsend
to boys, but there were no boys about. I stuck on a rift
before I had gone ten yards, and saw with misgiving
the paint transferred from the bottom of my little
scow to the tops of the stones thus early in the journey.
But I was soon making fair headway, and taking trout
for my dinner as I floated along. My first mishap was
when I broke the second joint of my rod on a bass,
and the first serious impediment to my progress was
when I encountered the trunk of a prostrate elm
bridging the stream within a few inches of the surface.
My rod mended and the elm cleared, I anticipated
better sailing when I should reach the Delaware itself;
but I found on this day and on subsequent days that
the Delaware has a way of dividing up that is very
embarrassing to the navigator. It is a stream of many
minds: its waters cannot long agree to go all in the
same channel, and whichever branch I took I was
pretty sure to wish I had taken one of the others. I w^as
constantly sticking on rifts, where I would have to
dismount, or running full tilt into willow banks, where
I would lose my hat or endanger my fishing-tackle.
On the whole, the result of my first day's voyaging was
not encouraging. I made barely eight miles, and my
ardor was a good deal dampened, to say nothing about
my clothing. In mid-afternoon I went to a well-to-do-
looking farmhouse and got some milk, which I am
certain the thrifty housewife skimmed, for its blueness
infected my spirits, and I went into camp that night

10 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

more than half persuaded to abandon the enterprise
in the morning. The lonehness of the river, too, unhke
that of the fields and woods, to which I was more accus-
tomed, oppressed me. In the woods, things are close to
you, and you touch them and seem to interchange
something with them; but upon the river, even though
it be a narrow and shallow one like this, you are more
isolated, farther removed from the soil and its attrac-
tions, and an easier prey to the unsocial demons. The
long, unpeopled vistas ahead; the still dark eddies;
the endless monotone and soliloquy of the stream; the
unheeding rocks basking like monsters along the shore,
half out of the water, half in ; a solitary heron starting
up here and there, as you rounded some point, and
flapping disconsolately ahead till lost to view, or stand-
ing like a gaunt spectre on the umbrageous side of the
mountain, his motionless form revealed against the
dark green as you passed; the trees and willows and
alders that hemmed vou in on either side, and hid the
fields and the farmhouses and the road that ran
near by, — these things and others aided the skimmed
milk to cast a gloom over my spirits that argued ill
for the success of my undertaking. Those rubber boots,
too, that parboiled my feet and were clogs of lead about
them, — whose spirits are elastic enough to endure
them ? A malediction upon the head of him who in-
vented them! Take vour old shoes, that will let the
water in and let it out again, rather than stand knee-
deep all day in these extinguishers.

I escaped from the river, that first night, and took to
the woods, and profited by the change. In the w^oods
I was at home again, and the bed of hemlock boughs
salved my spirits. A cold spring run came down off

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP n

the mountain, and beside it, underneath birches and
hemlocks, I improvised my hear^^hstone. In sleeping
on the ground it is a great advantage to have a back-
log; it braces and supports you, and it is a bedfellow
that will not grumble when, in the middle of the niirht,
you crowd sharply up against it. It serves to keep in
the warmth, also. A heavy stone or other point de re-
sistance at your feet is also a help. Or, better still,
scoop out a little place in the earth, a few inches deep,
so as to admit your body from your hips to your shoul-
ders; you thus get an equal bearing the whole length
of you. I am told the Western hunters and guides do
this. On the same principle, the sand makes a good
bed, and the snow. You make a mould in which you
fit nicely. My berth that night was between two logs
that the barkpeelers had stripped ten or more years
before. As they had left the bark there, and as hem-
lock bark makes excellent fuel, I had more reasons
than one to be grateful to them.

In the morning I felt much refreshed, and as if the
night had tided me over the bar that threatened to stay
my progress. If I can steer clear of skimmed milk, I
said, I shall now finish the voyage of fiftv miles to
Hancock with increasing pleasure.

When one breaks camp in the morning, he turns
back again and again to see what he has left. Surely,
he feels, he has forgotten something; what is it? But
it is only his own sad thoughts and musings he has left,
the fragment of his life he has lived there. Where he
hung his coat on the tree, where he slept on the boughs,
where he made his coffee or broiled his trout over the
coals, where he drank again and again at the little
brown pool in the spring run, where he looked long

12 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

and lonc^ up into the whispering branches overhead,
he has left what he cannot bring away with him, —
the flame and the ashes of himself.

Of certain game-birds it is thought that at times
they have the power of withholding their scent; no
hint or particle of themselves goes out upon the air.
I think there are persons whose spiritual pores are al-
ways sealed up, and I presume they have the best time
of it. Their hearts never radiate into the void ; they
do not yearn and sympathize without return; they
do not leave themselves by the wayside as the sheep
leaves her wool upon the brambles and thorns.

This branch of the Delaware, so far as I could learn,
had never before been descended by a white man in
a boat. Rafts of pine and hemlock timber are run
down on the spring and fall freshets, but of pleasure-
seekers in boats I appeared to be the first. Hence my
advent was a surprise to most creatures in the water
and out. I surprised the cattle in the field, and those
ruminating leg-deep in the water turned their heads
at my approach, swallowed their unfinished cuds, and
scampered off as if they had seen a spectre. I sur-
prised the fish on their spawning beds and feeding
grounds; they scattered, as my shadow glided down
upon them, like chickens when a hawk appears. I
surprised an ancient fisherman seated on a spit of
gravelly beach, with his back up stream, and leisurely
angling in a deep, still eddy, and mumbling to him-
self. As I shd into the circle of his vision his grip on
his pole relaxed, his jaw dropped, and he was too be-
wildered to reply to my salutation for some moments.
As I turned a bend in the river I looked back, and saw
him hastening away with great precipitation. I pre-

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 13

sume he had angled there for forty years without hav-
ing his privacy thus intruded upon. I surprised hawks
and herons and kingfishers. I came suddenly upon
muskrats, and raced with them down the rifts, they
having no time to take to their holes. At one point,
as I rounded an elbow in the stream, a black eagle
sprang from the top of a dead tree, and flapped hur-
riedly away. A kingbird gave chase, and disappeared
for some moments in the gulf between the great wings
of the eagle, and I imagined him seated upon his
back delivering his puny blows upon the royal bird.
I interrupted two or three minks fishing and hunting
alongshore. They would dart under the bank when
they saw me, then presently thrust out their sharp,
weasel-like noses, to see if the danger was imminent.
At one point, in a little cove behind the willows,
I surprised some schoolgirls, with skirts amazingly
abbreviated, wading and playing in the water. And
as much surprised as any, I am sure, was that hard-
worked looking housewife, when I came up from under
the bank in front of her house, and with pail in hand
appeared at her door and asked for milk, taking the
precaution to intimate that I had no objection to the
yellow scum that is supposed to rise on a fresh article
of that kind.

" What kind of milk do vou want ? "

"The best you have. Give me two quarts of it,"
I replied.

" What do vou want to do with it ? " with an anxious
tone, as if I might want to blow up something or burn
her barns with it.

"Oh, drink it," I answered, as if I frequently put
milk to that use.

14 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

"Well, I suppose I can get you some;" and she
presently reappeared with swimming pail, with those
little yellow flakes floating about upon it that one likes

to see.

I passed several low dams the second day, but had
ao trouble. I dismounted and stood upon the apron,
and the boat, with plenty of line, came over as lightly
as a chip, and swung around in the eddy below like
a steed that knows its master. In the afternoon, while
slowly drifting down a long eddy, the moist southwest
wind brought me the welcome odor of strawberries,
and running ashore by a meadow, a short distance
below, I was soon parting the daisies and filling my
cup with the dead-ripe fruit. Berries, be they red,
blue, or black, seem like a special providence to the
camper-out; they are luxuries he has not counted on,
and I prized these accordingly. Later in the day it
threatened rain, and I drew up to shore under the shel-
ter of some thick overhanging hemlocks, and proceeded
to eat my berries and milk, glad of an excuse not to
delay my lunch longer. While tarrying here I heard
young voices up stream, and looking in that direction
saw two boys coming down the rapids on rude floats.
They were racing along at a lively pace, each with a
pole in his hand, dexterously avoiding the rocks and
the breakers, and schooling themselves thus early in
the duties and perils of the raftsman. As they saw me
one observed to the other, —

"There is the man we saw go by when we were
building our floats. If w^e had known he was coming
so far, maybe we could have got him to give us a ride."

They drew near, guided their crafts to shore beside
me, and tied up, their poles answering for haw^sers.

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 13

They proved to be Johnny and Denny Dwire, aged
ten and twelve. They were friendly boys, and though
not a bit bashful were not a bit impertinent. And
Johnny, who did the most of the talking, had such a
sweet musical voice; it was like a bird's. It seems
Denny had run away, a day or two before, to his uncle'i
five miles above, and Johnny had been after him, and
was bringing his prisoner home on a float; and it v/as
hard to tell which was enjoying the fun most, the cap-
tor or the captured.

" Why did you run away ? " said I to Denny.

"Oh, 'cause," replied he, with an air which said
plainly, "The reasons are too numerous to mention."

"Boys, you know, will do so, sometimes," said
Johnny, and he smiled upon his brother in a way that
made me think they had a very good understanding
upon the subject.

They could both swim, yet their floats looked very
perilous, — three pieces of old plank or slabs, with
two cross-pieces and a fragment of a board for a rider,
and made without nails or withes.

"In some places," said Johnny, "one plank was
here and another ofi" there, but we managed, some-
how, to keep atop of them."

" Let 's leave our floats here, and ride with him the
rest of the way," said one to the other.

"All right; may we, mister?"

I assented, and we were soon afloat again. How
they enjoyed the passage; how smooth it was; how
the boat glided along; how quickly she felt the paddle!
They admired her much ; they praised my steersman
ship; they praised my fish-pole and all my fixings dovm
to my hateful rubber boots. When w^e stuck op the

16 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

rifts, as we did several times, they leaped out quickly,
with their bare feet and legs, and pushed us off.

*' I think," said Johnny, " if you keep her straight
and let her have her own way, she will find the deepest
water. Don't you, Denny ? "

"I think she will," replied Denny; and I found the
boys were pretty nearly right.

I tried them on a point of natural history. I had
observed, coming along, a great many dead eels lying
on the bottom of the river, that I supposed had died
from spear wounds. "No," said Jolinny, "they are
lamper-eels. They die as soon as they have built their
nests and laid their eggs."

" Are you sure ? "

"That's what they all say, and I know they are

lampers."

So I fished one up out of the deep water with my
paddle-blade and examined it; and sure enough it w^as
a lamprey. There was the row of holes along its head,
and its ugly suction mouth. I had noticed their nests,
too, all along, where the water in the pools shallowed to
a few feet and began to hurry toward the rifts: they
were low mounds of small stones, as if a bushel or more
of large pebbles had been dumped upon the river bot-
tom; occasionallv thev were so near the surface as to
make a big ripple. The eel attaches itself to the stones
by its mouth, and thus moves them at will. An old
fisherman told me that a strong man could not pull
a large lamprey loose from a rock to which it had at-
tached itself. It fastens to its prey in this way, and
sucks the life out. A friend of mine savs he once saw
in the St. Lawrence a pike as long as his arm with a
lamprey eel attached to him. The fish was nearly

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 17

dead and was quite white, the eel had so sucked out
his blood and substance. The fish, when seized, darts
against rocks and stones, and tries in vain to rub the
eel off, then succumbs to the sucker.

"The lampers do not all die," said Denny, "be-
cause they do not all spawn;" and I observed that
the dead ones were all of one size and doubtless of the
same age.

The lamprey is the octopus, the devil-fish, of these
waters, and there is, perhaps, no tragedy enacted here
that equals that of one of these vampires slowly suck-
ing the life out of a bass or a trout.

My boys went to school part of the time. Did they
have a good teacher ?

" Good enough for me," said Johnny.

" Good enough for me," echoed Denny.

Just below Bark-a-boom — the name is worth
keeping — they left me. I was loath to part with them;
their musical voices and their thorough good-fellow-
ship had been very acceptable. With a little persua-
sion, I think they would have left their home and hum-
ble fortunes, and gone a-roving with me.

About four o'clock the warm, vapor-laden south-
west wind brought forth the expected thunder-shower.
I saw the storm rapidly developing behind the moun-
tains in my front. Presently I came in sight of a long
covered wooden bridge that spanned the river about
a mile ahead, and I put my paddle into the water with
all my force to reach this cover before the storm. It
was neck and neck most of the way. The storm had
the wind, and I had it — in my teeth. The bridge was
at Shavertown, and it was by a close shave that I got
under it before the rain was upon me. How it poured

18 A SUxMMER BOATING TRIP

and rattled and whipped in around the abutment of
the bridge to reach me ! I looked out well satisfied upon
the foaming water, upon the wet, unpainted houses
and barns of the Shavertowners, and upon the trees,

"Caught and cuffed by the gale."

Another traveler — the spotted-winged nighthawk —
was also roughly used by the storm. He faced it bravely,
and beat and beat, but was unable to stem it, or even
hold his own ; gradually he drifted back, till he was lost
to siirht in the wet obscurity. The water in the river
rose an inch while I waited, about three quarters of an
hour. Only one man, I reckon, saw me in Shavertown,
and he came and gossiped with me from the bank
above when the storm had abated.

The second night I stopped at the sign of the elm-
tree. The woods were too w^et, and I concluded to
make my boat my bed. A superb elm, on a smooth
grassy plain a few feet from the water's edge, looked
hospitable in the twilight, and I drew my boat up
beneath it. I hung my clothes on the jagged edges of
its rough bark, and went to bed with the moon, " in her
third quarter," peeping under the branches upon me.
I had been reading Stevenson's amusing "Travels
with a Donkey," and the lines he pretends to quote
from an old play kept running in my head : — •

"The bed was made, the room was fit.
By punctual eve the stars were lit;
The air was sweet, the water ran;
No need was there for maid or man.
When we put up, my ass and I,
At God's green caravanserai."

But the stately elm played me a trick: it slyly and at
iong intervals let great drops of water down upon me.

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 19

now with a sharp smack upon my rubber coat; then
with a heavy thud upon the seat in the bow or stern
of my boat; then plump into my upturned ear, or upon
my uncovered arm, or with a ring into my tin cup, or
with a splash into my coffee-pail that stood at my side
full of water from a spring I had just passed. After
two hours' trial I found dropping off to sleep, under
such circumstances, was out of the question ; so I sprang
up, in no very amiable mood toward my host, and drew
my boat clean from under the elm. I had refreshing
slumber thenceforth, and the birds were astir in the
morning long before I was.

There is one way, at least, in which the denuding
the country of its forests has lessened the rainfall: in
certain conditions of the atmosphere every tree is a
great condenser of moisture, as I had just observed
in the case of the old elm ; little showers are generated
in their branches, and in the aggregate the amount
of water precipitated in this way is considerable. Of
a foggy summer morning one may see little puddles of
water standing on the stones beneath maple-trees,
alono; the street ; and in winter, when there is a sudden
change from cold to warm, with fog, the water fairly
runs down the trunks of the trees, .and streams from
their naked branches. The temperature of the tree is
so much below that of the atmosphere in such cases
that the condensation is very rapid. In lieu of these
arboreal rains we have the dew upon the grass, but it
is doubtful if the grass ever drips as does a tree.

The birds, I say, were astir in the morning before
I was, and some of them were more wakeful through
the night, unless they sing in their dreams. At this
season one may hear at intervals numerous bird voices

go A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

during the night. The whip-poor-will was piping when
I lay down, and I still heard one when I woke up aftf-r
midnight. I heard the song sparrow and the kingbird
also/ like watchers calling the hour, and several times
I heard the cuckoo. Indeed, I am convinced that our
cuckoo is to a considerable extent a night bird, and
that he moves about freely from tree to tree. His pecu-
liar guttural note, now here, now there, may be heard
almost any summer night, in any part of the country,
and occasionally his better known cuckoo call. He is
a great recluse by day, but seems to wander abroad
freely by night.

The birds do indeed begin with the day. The farmer
who is in the field at work while he can yet see stars
catches their first matin hymns. In the longest June
days the robin strikes up about half past three o'clock,
and is quickly followed by the song sparrow, the oriole,
the catbird, the wren, the wood thrush, and all the rest
of the tuneful choir. Along the Potomac I have heard
the Virginia cardinal whistle so loudly and persistently
in the treetops above, that sleeping after four o'clock
was out of the question. Just before the sun is up,
there is a marked lull, during which, I imagine, the
birds are at breakfast.. While building their nest, it is
very early in the morning that they put in their big
strokes; the back of their day's work is broken before
you have begun yours.

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

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 21

develop notes and traits of their own, and among the
more famiHar orchard and garden birds one ma}?
notice the same tendency. I observe a great variety
of songs, and even quahties of voice, among the orioles
and among the song sparrows. On this trip my ear was
especially attracted to some striking and original spar-
row 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 incon-
gruity, 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
iaid 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.

22 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

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 rive- had improved much
since the first day, — was, indeed, without taint, —
and the water was sweet and good. There were farm-
houses 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 fortv or fiftv 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 surroundings ;
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 thev 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. AYith what curiosity they looked
me over! Where had I come from; where was I going;
how long had I been on the wav; who built mv 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 the}^ bethought them of the

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 23

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 whirl-
pools 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 an-
other 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 v/ere
quite in earnest, and I told them I would walk up to
the village and post some letters to my friends before
[ 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 ? "

24 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

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 whirl-
pool 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 vSodom, 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 dis-
gusted 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 farm-
house. 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.

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP * 25

We know how good a bath is, and the unspeakable
dehciousness 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 bodv, that was
suspended upon rods and swung from the top. How
I should have liked to hear its historv and the storv^ of
the lives it had rocked, as the rain sang and the boughs
tossed without! Above it was the cradle of a phoebe-
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 wer(

26 • A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

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, matchinir
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 v/ind 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 eddv of a
big rock under an overhanging tree till it should have
passed. But it did-ifot pass; it thickened and deepened,
and reached a steady pour by the time I had calcu-
lated the sun would be gilding the mountain-tops. I

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 27

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 hyper-
critical ; we may yet be glad to dine off the hulls alone.

28 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

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 scal-
loped ruflaes, 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 no-
where 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 davbreak nearly on time. The

»■■■ »-'

water in the river had crept up during the night to
within a few inches of mv 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 mv arm. The wood was decaved, but the bark
was perfect. I broke it in two, punched out the rotten
wood, and had the bark intact. The fattv or resinous
substance in this bark preserves it, and makes it excel-
lent 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

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 29

snug, well-ordered houses; but there is often a real
satisfaction when things come to their worst, — a sat-
isfaction 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 farm-
house looked very inviting, just across the road from
the barn; but as no one was about, and no faces ap-
peared 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 up
stream.

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

30 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

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,
suf'c'-estin^ 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 SUMMER BOATING TRIP 31

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 repHed, " 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 Sun-
day), 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 ap-
peared. My story interested him immensely. He had
seen twelve summers, but he had only been four miles
trom home up and down the river: he had been down

32 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

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 sav, 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
seventv-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 reck-
less enterprise, but there were three girls. For refresh-
ments they bought a couple of gallons of whiskey and
a few pounds of sugar. When the spree was over, and
tke 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 Henrv's sister and the school-
mistress 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,
aad looked up and down the road, then glanced over

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 33

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 fright-
ened 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 hand-car 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, squeal-
ing 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 an-
other occasion. He raises himself by a peculiar mo-
tion, 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 en-
tirely 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 ex-
pected they would conceal themselves in the woods j
but as I drev/ near the place they came out, and I saV

34 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP

by their motions they were going to make a rush by
me up stream. 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, a«d 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 en-
camped for the night on an island near Hawk's Point.
I slept in my boat on the beach, and in the morning
mv 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
airly in the mornin';" a distinction I was forced to
admit. Before I had reembarked some cows came
down to the shore, and I watched them ford the river
to the island. They did it with great ease and preci-
sion. I was told they will sometimes, during high water,

A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 35

swim over to the islands, striking in well up stream,
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 leap-
ing 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 pic-
ture.

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

ID..

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park
with President Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I pro-
mised some friends to wTite up my impressions of the
President and of the Park, but I have been slow in
getting around to it. The President himself, having
the absolute leisure and peace of the White House,
wrote his account of the trip nearly two years ago!
But with the stress and strain of my life at " Slabsides,"
— administering the affairs of so many of the wild
creatures of the woods about me, — I have not till
this blessed season found the time to put on record
an account of the most interesting thing I saw in that
wonderful land, which, of course, was the President
himself.

When I accepted his invitation I was well aware
that during the journey I should be in a storm centre
^ost of the time, which is not always a pleasant })ros-
pect to a man of my habits and disposition. The Pre-
sident himself is a good deal of a storm, — a man of
such abounding energy and ceaseless activity that
he sets everything in motion around him w^herever
he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied
on his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs
and in receiving personal and political homage in the
towns and cities we were to pass through. But when
all this was over, and I found myself with him in the
wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent
and a few attendants to help take up his tremendous

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 37

personal impact, how was it likely to fare with a non-
strenuous person like myself, I asked ? I had visions
of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could
be done only upon snowshoes, and I had never had the
things on my feet in my life. If the infernal fires be-
neath, that keep the pot boiling so out there, should
melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along
on horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough coun-
try; and as I had not been on a horse's back since the
President was born, how would it be likely to fare with
me there ?

I had known the President several years before he
became famous, and we had had some correspond-
ence on subjects of natural history. His interest in such
themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main
motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see
and study in its semi-domesticated condition the great
game which he had so often hunted during his ranch
days; and he was kind enough to think it would be an
additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like
myself. For my own part, I knew nothing about big
game, but I knew there was no man in the country
with whom I should so like to see it as Roosevelt.

Some of our newspapers reported that the Presi-
dent intended to hunt in the Park. A woman in Ver-
mont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, and
hoped I would teach the President to love the animals
as much as I did, — as if he did not love them much
more, because his love is founded upon knowledge,
and because they had been a part of his life. She did
not know that I svas then cherishing the secret hope
that I might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat;
but this fun did not come to me. The President said,

38 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

"I will not fire a gun in the Park; then I shall have
no explanations to make." Yet once I did hear him
say in the wilderness, " I feel as if I ought to keep the
camp in meat. I always have.'* I regretted that he
could not do so on this occasion.

I have never been disturbed by the President's
hunting trips. It is to such men as he that the big
game legitimately belongs, — men who regard it from
the point of view of the naturalist as well as from that
of the sportsman, who are interested in its preserva-
tion, and who share with the world the delight they
experience in the chase. Such a hunter as Roosevelt
is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is
from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints,"

— bears, cougars, and bobcats, — the fewer of these
there are, the better for the useful and beautiful game.

The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park cer-
tainly needed killing. The superintendent reported
that he had seen where thev had slain nineteen elk,
and we saw where they had killed a deer, and dragged
its body across the trail. Of course, the President
would not now on his hunting trips shoot an elk or a
deer except to "keep the camp in meat," and for this
purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or a steer
for the table at home.

We left Washington on April 1, and strung several
of the larger Western cities on our thread of travel,

— Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, St. Paul, jNIinne-
apolis, — as well as many lesser towns, in each of
which the President made an address, sometimes
brief, on a few occasions of an hour or more.

He gave himself very freely and heartily to the peo-
ple wherever he went. He could easily match theii

THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER AND CANYON.

From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 39

Western cordiality and good-fellowship. Wherever
}iis train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or had al-
ready gathered, to welcome him. His advent made
a, holiday in each town he visited. At all the principal
stops the usual programme was: first, his reception
by the committee of citizens appointed to receive him,

— they usually boarded his private car, and were one
by one introduced to him; then a drive through the
town with a concourse of carriages; then to the hall
or open air platform, where he spoke to the assembled
throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the
train, and off for the next stop — a round of hand-
shaking, carriage-driving, speech-making each day.
He usually spoke from eight to ten times every tw^enty-
four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes from
the rear platform of his private car, at others for an
hour or more in some large hall. In Chicago, Mil-
waukee, and St. Paul, elaborate banquets were given
him and his party, and on each occasion he delivered
a carefully prepared speech upon questions that in-
volved the policy of his administration. The throng
that greeted him in the vast Auditorium in Chicago

— that rose and waved and waved again — was one
of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed.

In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke
that presently filled the large hall after the feasting
was over was enough to choke any speaker, but it did
not seem to choke the President, though he does not
use tobacco in anv form himself; nor was there any-
thing foggy about his utterances on that occasion upon
legislative control of the trusts.

In St. Paul the city w^as inundated w^ith humanity,

— a vast human tide that left the middle of the streets

40 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

bare as our line of carriages moved slowly along, but
that rose up in solid walls of town and prairie human-
ity on the sidewalks and city dooryards. How hearty
and happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I
spied in the throng on the curbstone a large silk ban-
ner that bore my own name as the title of some so-
ciety. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen
anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids
down their backs. As my carriage drew near them,
they pressed their way through the throng, and threw
a large bouquet of flowers into my lap. I think it would
be hard to say who blushed the deeper, the girls or
myself. It was the first time I had ever had flowers
showered upon me in public; and then, maybe, I felt
that on such an occasion I was only a minor side issue,
and public recognition was not called for. But the
incident pleased the President. "I saw that banner
and those flowers," he said afterwards; "and I was
delighted to see you honored that way." But I fear
I have not to this day thanked the Monroe School of
St. Paul for that pretty attention.

The time of the passing of the presidential train
seemed well known, even on the Dakota prairies. At
one point I remember a little brown schoolhouse stood
not far off, and near the track the schoolma'am, with
her flock, drawn up in line. We were at luncheon, but
the President caught a glimpse ahead through the win-
dow, and quickly took in the situation. With napkin
in hand, he rushed out on the platform and waved to
them. "Those children," he said, as he came back,
"wanted to see the President of the United States,
and I could not disappoint them. They may never
have another chance. What a deep impression such
things make when we are young ! "

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 41

At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the
former foreman of his ranch, and another cowboy
friend of the old davs, and they rode with the Presi-
dent in his private car for several hours. He was as
happy with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting
old chums. He beamed with delight all over. The life
which those men represented, and of which he had
himself once formed a part, meant so much to him;
it had entered into the very marrow of his being, and
I could see the joy of it all shining in his face as he sat
and lived parts of it over again with those men that
day. He bubbled with laughter continually. The
men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his
open-handed cordiality and good-fellowship. He him-
self evidently wanted to forget the present, and to live
only in the memory of those wonderful ranch days, — •
that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains. It
all came back to him with a rush when he found him-
self alone with these heroes of the rope and the stirrup.
How much more keen his appreciation was, and how
much quicker his memory, than theirs! He was con-
stantly recalling to their minds incidents which they
had forgotten, and the names of horses and dogs which
had escaped them. His subsequent life, instead of
making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed
to have made it more vivid bv contrast.

When they had gone, I said to him, " I think ycur
affection for those men very beautiful."

"How could I help it?" he said.

"Still, few men in your station could or would go
back and renew such friendships."

" Then I pity them," he replied.

He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the

42 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

making of him. It had built him up and hardened
him physically, and it had opened his eyes to the wealth
of manly character among the plainsmen and cattle-
men.

Had he not gone West, he said, he neyer would have
raised the Rough Riders Regiment; and had he not
raised that regiment and gone to the Cuban War, he
would not haye been made governor of New York;
and had not this happened, the pohticians would not
unwittingly have made his rise to the Presidency so
inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that he would
have got there some day; but without the chain of
events above outlined, his rise could not have been so
rapid.

Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota
in the early evening twilight, and the President stood
on the rear platform of his car, gazing wistfully upon
the scene. "I know all this country like a book," he
said. "I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and
tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks
like home to me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall
soon reach Medora, which was my station." It was
plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking land-
scape, hills and valleys to Eastern eyes utterly demoral-
ized and gone to the bad, — flayed, fantastic, treeless,
a riot of naked clay slopes, chimney-like buttes, and
dry coulees, — was in his eyes a land of almost pa-
thetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage
here and there where his cattle used to graze, and where
the deer and the pronghorn used to linger.

When we reached Medora, where the train was
scheduled to stop an hour, it was nearly dark, but the
whole town and country round had turned out to wel-

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 43

come their old townsman. After much hand-shaking,
the committee conducted us down to a Httle hall, where
the President stood on a low platform, and made a
short address to the standing crowd that filled the
place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken by
the local photographer, after which the President
stepped down, and, while the people filed past him,
shook hands with every man, woman, and child of
them, calling many of them by name, and greeting
them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old fron-
tiersman whose hand he grasped, calling him by name,
and saying, "How well I remember you! You once
mended my gunlock for me, — put on a new hammer.'*
-Yes," said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man,
Mr. President." He was among his old neighbors
once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was very
obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell
him they were going to have a dance presently, and
ask him if he would not stay and open it! The Pre-
sident laughingly excused himself, and said his train
had to leave on schedule time, and his time was
nearly up. I thought of the incident in his "Ranch
Life," in which he says he once opened a cowboy ball
with the wife of a Minnesota man, who had recently
shot a bullying Scotchman who danced opposite. He
says the scene reminded him of the ball where Bret
Harte's heroine " went down the middle with the man
that shot Sandy Magee."

Before reaching Medora he had told me many an-
ecdotes of " Roaring Bill Jones," and had said I should
see him. But it turned out that Roaring Bill had be-
gun to celebrate the coming of the President too early
in the dav, and when w^e reached Medora he was not

44 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

in a presentable condition. I forget now how he hac
earned his name, but no doubt he had come honestly
bv it ; it was a part of his history, as was that of " The
Pike," "Cold Turkey Bill," "Hash Knife Joe," and
other classic heroes of the frontier.

It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the
Far West, or a certain proportion of them, — bad
lands, bad horses, and bad men. And it is a degree
of badness that the East has no conception of, — land
that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never
laid its shaping and softening hand upon it; horses
that, when mounted, put their heads to the ground
and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, re-
sort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake
off or to kill their riders; and men who amuse them-
selves in bar-rooms bv shootins; about the feet of a
"tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who ride along
the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the
old plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the
Rockies, and hint very strongly of the infernal regions,
so a kind of satanic element in men and animals —
an underlying devilishness — crops out, and we have
the border ruffian and the bucking broncho.

The President told of an Englishman on a hunting
trip in the West, who, being an expert horseman at
home, scorned the idea that he could not ride any of
their "grass-fed ponies." So they gave him a bucking
broncho. He was soon lying on the ground, much
stunned. When he could speak, he said, "I should
not have minded him, you know, hut 'e 'ides 'is 'cad.''

At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take
w^ater while we were at lunch. A crowd soon gathered,
and the President went out to greet them. We could

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 45

hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the
crowd. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by,
I must go now." Still he did not come. Then we heard
more talking and laughing, and another "good-by,'*
and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see what
had happened. I found the President down on the
ground shaking hands with the whole lot of them.
Some one had reached up to shake his hand as he
Tvas about withdrawing, and this had been followed by
such eagerness on the part of the rest of the people
to do likewise, that the President had instantly got
down to gratify them. Had the secret service men
known it, they would have been in a pickle. We prob-
ably have never had a President who responded more
freely and heartily to the popular liking for him than
Roosevelt. The crowd always seem to be in love with
him the moment they see him and hear his voice. And
it is not by reason of any arts of eloquence, or charm
of address, but by reason of his inborn heartiness and
sincerity, and his genuine manliness. The people feel
his quality at once. In Bermuda last winter I met a
Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at some
place in New England very near the President while
he was speaking, and who said, "The man had not
spoken three minutes before I loved him, and had
any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him to
pieces." It is the quality in the man that instantly in-
spires such a liking as this in strangers that will, I am
sure, safeguard him in all public places.

I once heard him say that he did not like to be ad-
dressed as "His Excellency;" he added laughingly,
"They might just as well call me His Transparency,
for all I care." It is this transparency, this direct,

46 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one
source of his popularity. The people do love trans-
parency, — all of them but the politicians.

A friend of his one day took him to task for some
mistake he had made in one of his appointments. " My
dear sir," replied the President, " where you know of
one mistake I have made, I know of ten." How such
candor must make the politicians shiver!

I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of
snowshoeing in the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horse-
back riding. Yet when we reached Gardiner, the en-
trance to the Park, on that bright, crisp April morning,
with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops,
and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at
the head of a squad of soldiers, with a fine saddler
horse for the President, and an ambulance drawn by
two span of mules for me, I confess that I experienced
just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they
might have given me the option of the saddle or the
ambulance. Yet I entered the vehicle as if it was just
what I had been expecting.

The President and his escort, with a cloud of cow-
boys hovering in the rear, were soon off at a lively
pace, and my ambulance followed close, and at a lively
pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping
the seat with my hands. "Well," I said to myself,
"they are giving me a regular Western send-ofi^;" and
I thought, as the ambulance swayed from side to side,
that it would suit me just as well if my driver did not
try to keep up with the presidential procession. The
driver and his mules were shut off from me by a cur-
tain, but, looking ahead out of the sides of the vehicle,
I saw two good-sized logs lying across our course.

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 47

Surely, I thought (and barely had time to think), he
will avoid these. But he did not, and as we passed over
them I was nearly thrown through the top of the
ambulance. "This is a lively send-off," I said, rub-
bing my bruises with one ha?nd, while I clung to the
seat with the other. Presently I saw the cowboys
scrambling up the bank as if to get out of our way;
then the President on his fine gray stallion scrambling
up the bank with his escort, and looking ominously
in m}' direction, as we thundered by.

"Well," I said, "this is indeed a novel ride; for
once in my life I have sidetracked the President of
the United States! I am given the right of way over
all." On we tore, along the smooth, hard road, and
did not slacken our pace till, at the end of a mile or
two, we began to mount the hill toward Fort Yellow-
stone. And not till we reached the fort did I learn that
our mules had run away. They had been excited
beyond control by the presidential cavalcade, and the
driver, finding he could not hold them, had aimed
only to keep them in the road, and we very soon had
the road all to ourselves.

Fort Yellowstone is at Mammoth Hot Springs, where
one gets his first view of the characteristic scenery of
the Park, — huge, boihng springs with their columns
of vapor, and the first characteristic odors which sug-
gest the traditional infernal regions quite as much as
the boiling and steaming water does. One also gets a
taste of a much more rarefied air than he has been used
to, and finds himself panting for breath on a very
slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built
themselves up an enormous mound that stands there
above the village on the side of the mountain, terraced

48 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting some vitreous
formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored
precious stones. It looks quite unearthly, and, though
the devil's frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian
caves are not far off, the suggestion is of something
celestial rather than of the nether regions, — a vision
of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements.

With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, step-
ping over the rills and creeks of steaming hot water,
and looked at the marvelously clear, cerulean, but
boihng, pools on the summit. The water seemed as
unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic
sculpturing that held it.

The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,
■ — little pockets in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground
at your feet, filled with deadly carbon dioxide. We
saw birds' feathers and quills in all of them. The
birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or
seeking shelter, and they never come out. We saw the
body of a martin on the bank of one hole. Into one
we sank a lighted torch, and it was extinguished as
quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave
or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by
we came upon a steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre
or more in extent. A pair of mallard ducks were swim-
ming about in one end of it, — the cool end. When we
approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer
water. As they progressed, the w^ater got hotter and
hotter, and the ducks' discomfort was evident. Pre-
sently they stopped, and turned toward us, half appeal-
ingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would
we please come no nearer ? As I took another step or
two, up they rose and disappeared over the hill. Had

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 49

they gone to the extreme end of the pool, we could
have had boiled mallard for dinner.

Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sun-
down, when the deer came down from the hills into
the streets, and ate hay a few yards from the officers'
quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic sheep.
This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it
up till May, at times a score or more of them profiting
thus on the government's bounty. When the sundown
gun was fired a couple of hundred yards away, they
gave a nervous start, but kept on with their feeding.
The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not
yet grown bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity
in that way.

The President wanted all the freedom and solitude
possible while in the Park, so all newspaper men and
other strangers were excluded. Even the secret service
men and his physician and private secretaries were
left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with
nature; he was evidently hungry for the wild and the
aboriginal, — a hunger that seems to come upon him
regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth on
his hunting trips for big game in the West.

We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fail
weather, bright, crisp days, and clear, freezing nights.
The first week we occupied three camps that had been
prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the northeast
corner of the Park, in the region drained by the
Gardiner River, where there was but little snow, and
which we reached on horseback.

The second week we visited the geyser region,
which lies a thousand feet or more higher, and where
the snow was still five or six feet deep. This part of

50 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

the journey was made in big sleighs, each drawn by
two span of horses.

On the horseback excursion, which involved only
about fifty miles of riding, we had a mule pack train,
and Sibley tents and stoves, with quite a retinue of
camp laborers, a lieutenant and an orderly or two,
and a guide, Billv Hofer.

The first camp was in a wild, rocky, and picturesque
gorge on the Yellowstone, about ten miles from the
fort. A slight indisposition, the result of luxurious
living, with no wood to chop or to saw, and no hills to
climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party
till the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove
me eight miles in a buggy. About two miles from camp
we came to a picket of two or three soldiers, where my
big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him confi-
dently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow,
winding trail toward camp. Except for an hour's
riding the day before with Captain Chittenden, I had
not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years, and
I had not spent as much as a day in the saddle during
my youth. That first sense of a live, spirited, powerful
animal beneath you, at whose mercv you are, — you,
a pedestrian all your days, — with gullies and rocks
and logs to cross, and deep chasms opening close
beside you, is not a little disturbing. But my big bay
did his part well, and I did not lose my head or my
nerve, as we cautiously made our way along: the nar^
row path on the side of the steep gorge, with a foaming
torrent rushing along at its foot, nor yet when we forded
the rocky and rapid Yellowstone. A misstep or a
stumble on the part of my steed, and probably the first
bubble of my confidence would have been shivered at

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 51

once; but this did not happen, and in due time we
reached the group of tents that formed the President's
camp.

The situation was deh'ghtful, — no snow, scattered
pine trees, a secluded valley, rocky heights, and the
clear, ample, trouty waters of the Yellowstone. The
President was not in camp. In the morning he had
stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major
Pitcher very naturally did not quite like the idea, and
wished to send an orderly with him.

"No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch,
and let me go alone. I will surely come back."

And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock
when he came briskly down the path from the east
to the camp. It came out that he had tramped about
eighteen miles through a very rough country. The day
before, he and the major had located a band of sev-
eral hundred elk on a broad, treeless hillside, and his
purpose was to find those elk, and creep up on them,
and eat his lunch under their very noses. And this he
did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of
them. He came back looking as fresh as when he
started, and at night, sitting before the big camp fire,
related his adventure, and talked with his usual em-
phasis and copiousness of many things. He told me
of the birds he had seen or heard ; among them he had
heard one that was new to him. From his description
I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire, a
bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the
West India solitaire, — one of the most impressive
songsters I ever heard, — and I wished to compare our
Western form with it.

The next morning we set out for our second camp.

52 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

ten or a dozen miles away, and in reaching it passed
over much of the ground the President had traversed
the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place
above a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered
pine trees, the President said, "It was right here thai
I heard that strange bird song." We paused a moment.
"And there it is now," he exclaimed.

Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from
the top of a small cedar, — a bright, animated, eloquent
song, but without the richness and magic of the song
of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, and
followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The
President was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It
seemed very shy, and we only caught glimpses of it.
In form and color it much resembles its West India
cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing
when we pursued it. It is a bird found only in the
wilder and higher parts of the Rockies. My impression
was that its song did not quite merit the encomiums
that have been pronounced upon it.

At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and
only Rocky Mountain woodchucks, and, soon after
we had resumed our journey, our first blue grouse, —
a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally
we would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or
lying down in the bushes, their large ears at attention
being the first thing to catch the eye. They would
often allow us to pass within a few rods of them with-
out showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over
this part of the Park, and we passed several old car-
casses of dead elk that had probably died a natural
death.

In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 53

the President and I were dismounted, and noting the
pleasing picture which our pack train of fifteen or
l^^enty mules made filing along the side of a steep
grassy slope, — a picture which he has preserved in
his late volume, " Out-Door Pastimes of an American

I Hunter," — our attention was attracted by plaintive,
musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the grass
about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird;
the President was of like opinion ; and I kicked about
in the tufts of grass, hoping to flush the bir(5. Now
here, now there, arose this sharp, but bird-like note.
Finally we found that it was made by a species of
gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its
specific name is I do not know, but it should be called
the singing gopher.

Our destination this day was a camp on Cotton-
wood Creek, near " Hell Roaring Creek." As we made
our way in the afternoon along a broad, open, grassy
valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill
to our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding
across the plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the
military salute, joined our party. He proved to be a
government scout, called the "Duke of Hell Roar-
ing," — an educated officer from the Austrian army
who, for some unknown reason, had exiled himself
here in this out-of-the-way part of the world. He was
a man in his prime, of fine, military look and bearing.
After conversing a few moments with the President
and Major Pitcher, he rode rapidly away.

i Our second camp, which we reached in mid-after-
noon, was in the edge of the woods on the banks of a
fine, large trout stream, where ice and snow still lin-
gered in patches. I tried for trout in the head of a

54 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDExNT

large, partly open pool, but did not get a rise; too much
ice in the stream, I concluded. Very soon my attention
was attracted by a strange note, or call, in the spruce
woods. The President had also noticed it, and, with
me, wondered what made it. Was it bird or beast?
Billy Hofer said he thought it was an owl, but it in no
way suggested an owl, and the sun was shining brightly.
It was a sound such as a boy might make by blowing
in the neck of an empty bottle. Presently we heard
it beyond us on the other side of the creek, which was
pretty good proof that the creature had wings.

"Let's go run that bird down," said the President
to me.

So off we started across a small, open, snow-streaked
plain, toward the woods beyond it. We soon decided
that the bird was on the top of one of a group of tall
spruces. After much skipping about over logs and
rocks, and much craning of our necks, we made him
out on the peak of a spruce. I imitated his call, when
he turned his head down toward us, but we could not
make out what he was.

" W'hy did we not think to bring the glasses ? " said
the President.

"I will run and get them," I replied.

"No," said he, "you stay here and keep that bird
treed, and I will fetch them."

So off he went like a boy, and was very soon back
with the glasses. W^e quickly made out that it was
indeed an owl, — the pigmy owl, as it turned out, —
not much larger than a bluebird. I think the Presi-
dent was as pleased as if we had bagged some big
game. He had never seen the bird before.

Throughout the trip I found his interest in bird life

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 55

very keen, and his eye and ear remarkably quick He
usually saw the bird or heard its note as quickly as I
did, — and I had nothing else to think about, and
had been teaching my eye and ear the trick of it for
over fifty years. Of course, his training as a big-game
hunter stood him in good stead, but back of that were
his naturalist's instincts, and his genuine love of all
forms of wild life.

I have been told that his ambition up to the time
he went to Harvard had been to be a naturalist, but
that there they seem to have convinced him that all
the out-of-door worlds of natural historv had be^n
conquered, and that the only worlds remaining were
in the laboratory, and to be won with the microscope
land the scalpel. But Roosevelt was a man made for
action in a wide field, and laboratory conquests could
not satisfy him. His instincts as a naturalist, how-
ever, lie back of all his hunting expeditions, and, in a
larger measure, I think, prompt them. Certain it is
that his hunting records contain more live natural
history than any similar records known to me, unless
it be those of Charles St. John, the Scotch naturalist-
Siportsman.

The Canada jays, or camp-robbers, as they are
often called, soon found out our camp that afternoon,
and no sooner had the cook begun to throw out peel-
ings and scraps and crusts than the jays began to carry
them off, not to eat, as I observed, but to hide them
in the thicker branches of the spruce trees. How tame
they were, coming within three or four yards of one!
Why this species of jay should everywhere be so fa-
miliar, and all other kinds so wild, is a puzzle.

In the morning, as we rode down the valley toward

56 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

our next camping-place, at Tower Falls, a band of
elk containing a hundred or more started along the
side of the hill a few hundred yards away. I was some
distance behind the rest of the party, a.= usual, when
I saw the President wheel his horse off to the left, and,
beckoning to me to follow, start at a tearing pace on
the trail of the fleeing elk. He afterw^ards told me
that he wanted me to get a good view of those elk at
close range, and he was afraid that if he sent the major
or Hofer to lead me, I would not get it. I hurried along
as fast as I could, which was not fast; the w^ay was
rough, — logs, rocks, spring runs, and a tenderfoot
rider.

Now and then the President, looking back and see-
ing what slow progress I was making, would beckon
to me impatiently, and I could fancy him saying, " If
I had a rope around him, he would come faster than
that!" Once or twice I lost sight of both him and the
elk; the altitude was great, and the horse was laboring
like a steam-engine on an upgrade. Still I urged him
on. Presently, as I broke over a hill, I saw the Presi-
dent pressing the elk up the opposite slope. At the
brow of the hill he stopped, and I soon joined him.
There on the top, not fifty yards away, stood the elk
in a mass, their heads toward us and their tongues
hanging out. They could run no farther. The Presi-
dent laughed like a boy. The spectacle meant much
more to him than it did to me. I had never seen a wild
elk till on this trip, but they had been among the not-
able game that he had hunted. He had traveled hun-
dreds of miles, and undergone great hardships, to get
within rifle range of these creatures. Now here stood
scores of them, with lolling tongues, begging for mercy.

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 57

After gazing at them to our hearts' content, we
turned away to look up our companions, who were
nowhere within sight. We finally spied them a mile
or more away, and, joining them, all made our way
to an elevated plateau that commanded an open land-
scape three or four miles across. It was high noon,
and the sun shone clear and warm. From this lookout
we saw herds upon herds of. elk scattered over the
slopes and gentle valleys in front of us. Some were
grazing, some were standing or lying upon the ground,
or upon the patches of snow. Through our glasses we
counted the separate bands, and then the numbers
of some of the bands or groups, and estimated that
three thousand elk were in full view in the landscape
around us. It was a notable spectacle. Afterward,
in Montana, I attended a council of Indian chiefs at
one of the Indian agencies, and told them, through
their interpreter, that I had been with the Great Chief
in the Park, and of the game we had seen. When I
told them of these three thousand elk all in view at
once, they grunted loudly, whether with satisfaction
or with incredulitv, I could not tell.

In the midst of this great game amphitheatre we
dismounted and enjoyed the prospect. And the Pre-
sident did an unusual thing, he loafed for nearly an
hour, — stretched himself out in the sunshine upon
a flat rock, as did the rest of us, and, I hope, got a
few winks of sleep. I am sure I did. Little, slender,
striped chipmunks, about half the size of ours, were
scurrying about; but I recall no other wild thing save
the elk.

From here we rode down the valley to our third
camp, at Tower Falls, stopping on the way to eat our

58 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

luncheon on a washed boulder beside a creek. On
this ride I saw my first and only badger; he^stuck his
striped head out of his hole in the ground only a few
yards away from us as we passed.

Our camp at Tower Falls was amid the spruces
above a canon of the Yellowstone, five or six hundred
feet deep. It was a beautiful and impressive situation,
— shelter, snugness, even cosiness, looking over the
brink of the awful and the terrifying. With a run and
a jump I think one might have landed in the river at
the bottom of the great abyss, and in doing so might
have scaled one of those natural obelisks or needles
of rock that stand up out of the depths two or three
hundred feet high. Nature shows you what an enor-
mous furrow her plough can open through the strata
when moving horizontally, at the same time that she
shows you what delicate and graceful columns her
slower and gentler aerial forces can carve out of the
piled strata. At the Falls there were two or three of
these columns, like the picket-pins of the elder gods.

Across the caiion in front of our camp, upon a grassy
plateau which was faced by a wall of trap rock, ap-
parently thirty or forty feet high, a band of moun-
tain sheep soon attracted our attention. They were
within long rifle range, but were not at all disturbed by
our presence, nor had they been disturbed by the road-
builders who, under Captain Chittenden, were con-
structing a government road along the brink of the
canon. We speculated as to whether or not the sheep
could get down the almost perpendicular face of the
chasm to the river to drink. It seemed to me impos-
sible. Would thev trv it while we were there to see ?
We all hoped so; and sure enough, late in the after-

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 59

noon the word came to our tents that the sheep were
coming down. The President, with coat off and a
towel around his neck, was shaving. One side of his
face was half shaved, and the other side lathered.
Hofer and I started for a point on the brink of the
canon where we could have a better view.

"I must see that," said the President. "The shav-
ing can wait, and the sheep won't="

So on he came, accoutred as he was, — coatless,
hatless, but not latherless, nor towelless. Like the
rest of us, his only thought was to see those sheep.
With glasses in hand, we watched them descend those
perilous heights, leaping from point to point, finding a
foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening
fragments of the crumbling rocks as they came, now
poised upon some narrow shelf and preparing for the
next leap, zig-zagging or plunging straight down till
the bottom was reached, and not one accident or mis-
step amid all that insecure footing. I think the Presi-
dent was the most pleased of us all; he laughed with
the delight of it, and quite forgot his need of a hat
and coat till I sent for them.

In the night we heard the sheep going back; we
could tell by the noise of the falling ^tones. In the
morning I confidently expected to see some of them
lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all
were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound.
They do, how^ever, occasionally meet with accidents
in their perilous climbing, and their dead bodies have
been found at the foot of the rocks. Doubtless some
point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and
crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the
lead.

60 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

The next dav, while the rest of us went fishing for
trout in the Yellowstone, three or four miles above
camp, over the roughest trail that we had yet traversed
on horseback, the President, who never fishes unless
put to it for meat, went oft' alone again with his lunch
in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked
the elk, and to feel the old sportsman's thrill without
the use of firearms. To do this involved a tramp of
eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge and up
the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near
the sheep, and was back in camp before we were.

We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are
called, from the yellow mark across their throats, and
I saw at short range a black-tailed deer bounding
along in that curious, stiff-legged, mechanical, yet
springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at
once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once,
affording a very singular spectacle.

We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and
on the morning of the third day set out on our return
to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at Yancey's on out way,
and exchanging greetings with the old frontiersman,
who died a few weeks later.

While in camp we always had a big fire at night in
the open near the tents, and around this we sat upon
logs or camp-stools, and listened to the President's
talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what
a varied and picturesque stream ! — anecdote, history,
science, politics, adventure, literature; bits of his
experience as a ranchman, hunter, Rough Rider,
legislator. Civil Service commissioner, police commis-
sioner, governor, president, — the frankest confes-
sions, the most telling criticisms, happy characteriza-

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT Gl

tlons of prominent political leaders, or foreign rulers,
or members of his own Cabinet; always surprising by
his candor, astonishing by his memory, and divertino-
by his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he
has that rare type of memory which retains details as
well as mass and generalities. One night something
started him off on ancient history, and one would have
thought he was just fresh from his college course in
history, the dates and names and events came so
readily. Another time he discussed palaeontology, and
rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the main
facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that
very day. He sees things as wholes, and hence the
relation of the parts comes easy to him.

At dinner, at the White House, the night before we
started on the expedition, I heard him talking with a
guest, — an officer of the British army, who was just
back from India. And the extent and variety of his
information about India and Indian history and the
relations of the British government to it were extraor-
dinary. It put the British major on his mettle to keep
pace with him.

One night in camp he told us the story of one of his
Rough Riders who had just written him from some
place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, wherever they
are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had
come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote
the President, and his letter ran something like this : —

" Dear Colonel, — I am in trouble. I shot a lady
in the eye, but I did not intend to hit the lady; I was
shooting at my wife."

And the presidential laughter rang out over the
treetops. To another Rough Rider, who was in jaii.

62 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

accused of horse stealing, he had loaned two hundred
dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise,
in due time the money came back. The Ex-Rough
wrote that his trial never came off. " We elected our
district attorney:'' and the laughter again sounded,
and drowned the noise of the brook near by.

On another occasion we asked the President if he
was ever molested by any of the "bad men" of the
frontier, with whom he had often come in contact.
"Onlv once," he said. The cowbovs had always

C/'

treated him with the utmost courtesy, both on the
round-up and in camp ; " and the few real desperadoes
I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only
was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy
nor a bona fide *' bad man," but by a ** broad-hatted
ruffian of a cheap and commonplace type." He had
been compelled to pass the night at a little frontier
hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower
floor, and was, in consequence, the only place where
the guests of the hotel, whether drunk or sober, could
sit. As he entered the room, he saw that evers^ man
there was being terrorized by a half-drunken ruffian
who stood in the middle of the floor with a revolver
in each hand, compelling different ones to treat.

"I went and sat down behind the stove," said the
President, "as far from him as I could get; and hoped
to escape his notice. The fact that I wore glasses,
together w^ith my evident desire to avoid a fight,
apparently gave him the impression that I could be
imposed upon w^ith impunity. He very soon ap-
proached me, flourishing his two guns, and ordered
me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when
the fellow became so threatening that I saw something

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 63

had to be done. The crowd, mostly sheep-herders and
small grangers, sat or stood back against the wall,
afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly.
Saying, ' Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk
around him to the bar, then, as I got opposite him, I
wheeled and fetched him as heavy a blow on the chin-
point as I could strike. He went down like a steer
before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he
went. I jumped on him, and, with my knees on his
chest, disarmed him in a hurry. The crowd was then
ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him and put
him in an outhouse." The President alludes to this
incident in his "Ranch Life," but does not give the
details. It brings out his mettle very distinctly.

He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his
political opponents at Albany, during his early career
as a member of the ^Assembly, to besmirch his char-
acter. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations
had become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap
for him, but he was not caught. His innate rectitude
and instinct for the right course saved him, as it has
saved him many times since. I do not think that in any
emergency he has to debate with himself long as to
the right course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind
of infallible instinct. His motives are so simple and
direct that he finds a straight and easy course where
another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder
and hesitate.

The President unites in himself powers and qualities
that rarelv go together. Thus, he has both physical
and moral courage in a degree rare in history. He can
stand calm and unflinching in the path of a charging
grizzly, and he can confront with equal coolness and

64 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

determination the predaceous corporations and mone}^
powers of the country.

He unites the quahties of the man of action with
those of the scholar and WTiter, — another very rare
combination. He unites the instincts and accom-
phshments of the best breeding and culture with the
broadest democratic sympathies and affiliations. He is
as happy with a frontiersman like Seth Bullock as with
a fellow Harvard man, and Seth Bullock is happy, too.

He unites great austerity with great good-nature.
He unites great sensibility with great force and will
power. He loves solitude, and he loves to be in the
thick of the fight. His love of nature is equaled only
by his love of the ways and marts of men.

He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent,
if not on the planet, to-day. He is many-sided, and
every side throbs with his tremendous life and energy ;
the pressure is equal all around. His interests are as
keen in natural history as in economics, in literature
as in statecraft, in the young poet as in the old soldier,
in preserving peace as in preparing for w^ar. And he
can turn all his great power into the new channel on
the instant. His interest in the whole of life, and in the
whole life of the nation, never flags for a moment.
His activity is tireless. All the relaxation he needs
or craves is a change of work. He is like the farmer's
fields, that only need a rotation of crops. I once heard
him say that all he cared about being President was
just "the big work."

During this tour through the West, lasting over two
months, he made nearly three hundred speeches; and
yet on his return Mrs. Roosevelt told me he looked as
fresh and unworn as when he left home.

SUNRISE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK.

From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 65

We went up into the big geyser region with the big
sleighs, each drawn by four horses. A big snow-bank
had to be shoveled through for us before we got to the
Golden Gate, two miles above Mammoth Hot Springs,
Beyond that we were at an altitude of about eight
thousand feet, on a fairly level course that led now
through woods, and now through open country, with
the snow of a uniform depth of four or five feet, except
as we neared the "formations," where the subterranean
warmth kept the ground bare. The roads had been
broken and the snow packed for us by teams from the
fort, otherwise the journey would have been impossible.

The President always rode beside the driver. P>om
his youth, he said, this seat had always been the most
desirable one to him. When the sleigh would strike
the bare ground, and begin to drag heavily, he would
bound out nimbly and take to his heels, and then all
three of us — ]\Iajor Pitcher, Mr. Childs, and myself — ■
would follow suit, sometimes reluctantly on my part.
Walking at that altitude is no fun, especially if you try
to keep pace with such a walker as the President is.
But he could not sit at his ease and let those horses
drag him in a sleigh over bare ground. When snow
was reached, we would again quickly resume our seats.

xAs one nears the geyser region, he gets the impression
from the columns of steam going up here and there
in the distance — now from behind a piece of woods,
now from out a hidden valley — that he is approaching
a manufacturing centre, or a railroad terminus. And
when he begins to hear the hoarse snoring of " Roaring
Mountain," the illusion is still more complete. At
Norris's there is a big vent where the steam comes
tearing out of a recent hole in the ground with terrific

66 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

force. Huge mounds of ice had formed from the con-
gealed vapor all around it, some of them very striking.

The novelty of the geyser region soon wears off.
Steam and hot water are steam and hot water the
world over, and the exhibition of them here did not
differ, except in volume, from what one sees by his
own fireside. The "Growler" is only a boihng tea-
kettle on a large scale, and " Old Faithful " is as if the
lid were to fly off, and the whole contents of the kettle
should be thrown high into the air. To be sure, boiling
lakes and steaming rivers are not common, but the
new features seemed, somehow, out of place, and as
if nature had made a mistake. One disliked to see so
much good steam and hot water going to waste; whole
towns might be warmed by them, and big wheels made
to go round. I wondered that they had not piped them
into the big hotels which they opened for us, and which
were warmed by wood fires.

At Norris's the big room that the President and
I occupied was on the ground floor, and was heated
by a huge box stove. As we entered it to go to bed,
the President said, " Oom John, don't you think it
is too hot here ? "

" I certainly do," I replied.

"Shall I open the window?"

"That will just suit me." And he threw the sash,
which came down to the floor, all the way up, making
an opening like a doorway. The night was cold, but
neither of us suffered from the abundance of fresh
air. The caretaker of the building was a big Swede
called Andy. In the morning Andy said that beat
him: "There was the President of the United States
sleeping in that room, with the window open to the

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 67

floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on
guard."

The President had counted much on seeing the
bears that in summer board at the Fountain Hotel,
but they were not yet out of their dens. We saw the
track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel.
At all the formations where the geysers are, the ground
was bare over a large area. I even saw a wild flower — •
an early buttercup, not an inch high — in bloom.
This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the Rockies.
It is the only fragrant buttercup I know.

As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward
the Fountain Hotel, the President suddenly jumped
out, and, with his soft hat as a shield to his hand,
captured a mouse that was running along over the
ground near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on
the chance that it might be a new species. While we
all went fishing in the afternoon, the President skinned
his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to Washing-
ton. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist
would have done it. This was the only game the
President killed in the Park. In relating the incident
to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the thought
occurred to me. Suppose he changes that u to an o,
and makes the President capture a moose, what a
predicament I shall be in! Is it anything more than
ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse into a
moose ? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis
happened to that little mouse. It turned out not to be
a new species, as it should have been, but a species
new to the Park.

I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steam-
ing pools in the Madison River, that seemed to my

68 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

hand almost blood-warm. I suppose thev found bet-
ter feeding where the water was warm. On the table
they did not compare with our Eastern brook trout.

I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that
thev had kalsomined some of the rooms with material
from one of the devil's paint-pots. It imparted a soft,
delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of things
Satanic.

One afternoon at Norris's, the President and I took
a walk to observe the birds. In the grove about the
barns there was a great number, the most attractive
to me being the mountain bluebird. These birds we
saw in all parts of the. Park, and at Norris's there was
an unusual number of them. How blue they were, —
breast and all. In voice and manner thev were almost
identical with our bluebird. The Western purple finch
was abundant here also, and juncos, and several kinds
of sparrows, with an occasional Western robin. A
pair of wild geese were feeding in the low, marshy
ground not over one hundred yards from us, but when
we tried to approach nearer they took wing. A few
geese and ducks seem to winter in the Park.

The second morning at Norris's, one of our team-
sters, George Marvin, suddenly dropped dead from
some heart affection, just as he had finished caring for
his team. It was a great shock to us all. I never saw
a better man with a team than he was. I had ridden
on the seat beside him all the day previous. On one
of the " formations " our teams had got mired in the
soft, putty-like mud, and at one time it looked as if
they could never extricate themselves, and I doubt
if they could have, had it not been for the skill with
which Marvin managed them. We started for the

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 60

Grand Canon up the Yellowstone that morning, and,
in order to give myself a walk over the crisp snow in
the clear, frosty air, I set out a little while in advance
of the teams. x\s I did so, I saw the President, accom-
panied by one of the teamsters, walking hurriedly
toward the barn to pay his last respects to the body
of Marvin. After we had returned to Mammoth Hot
Springs, he made inquiries for the young woman to
whom he had been told that Marvin was engaged to
be married. He looked her up, and sat a long time
with her in her home, offering his sympathy, and speak-
ing words of consolation. The act shows the depth
and breadth of his humanity.

At the Caiion Hotel the snow was very deep, and
had become so soft from the warmth of the earth be-
neath, as well as from the sun above, that we could
only reach the brink of the Canon on skis. The Presi-
dent and Major Pitcher had used skis before, but I
had not, and, starting out without the customary pole,
I soon came to grief. The snow gave way beneath
me, and I was soon in an awkward predicament.
The more I struggled, the lower my head and shoul-
ders went, till only my heels, strapped to those long
timbers, protruded above the snow. To reverse my
position was impossible till some one came, and reached
me the end of a pole, and pulled me upright. But I
very soon got the hang of the things, and the Presi-
dent and I quickly left the superintendent behind.
I think I could have passed the President, but my man-
ners forbade. He was heavier than I was, and broke
in more. When one of his feet would go down half a
yard or more, I noted with admiration the skilled
diplomacy he displayed in extricating it. The tend-

70 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT

ency of my skis was all the time to diverge, and each
to go off at an acute angle to my main course, and I
had constantly to be on the alert to check this tend-
ency.

Paths had been shoveled for us along the brink of
the Canon, so that we got the usual views from the
different points. The Canon was nearly free from
snow, and was a grand spectacle, by far the grandest
to be seen in the Park. The President told us that
once, when pressed for meat, while returning through
here from one of his hunting trips, he had made his
way down to the river that we saw rushing along
beneath us, and had caught some trout for dinner.
Necessity alone could induce him to fish.

Across the head of the Falls there was a bridge of
snow and ice, upon which we were told that the coyotes
passed. As the season progressed, there would come
a day when the bridge would not be safe. It would
be interesting to know if the coyotes knew when this
time arrived.

The only live thing we saw in the Canon was an
osprey perched upon a rock opposite us.

Near the falls of the Yellowstone, as at other places
we had visited, a squad of soldiers had their winter
quarters. The President always called on them, looked
over the books they had to read, examined their house-
keeping arrangements, and conversed freely with
them.

In front of the hotel were some low hills separated
by gentle valleys. At the President's suggestion, he
and I raced on our skis down those inclines. We had
only to stand up straight, and let gravity do the rest.
As we were going swiftly down the side of one of the

CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 71

hills, I saw out of the corner of my eye the President
taking a header into the snow. The snow had given
way beneath him, and nothing could save him from
taking the plunge. I don't know whether I called out,
or only thought, something about the downfall of the
administration. At any rate, the administration was
down, and pretty well buried, but it was quickly on
its feet again, shaking off the snow with a boy's laugh-
ter. I kept straight on, and very soon the laugh was
on me, for the treacherous snow sank beneath me,
and I took a header, too.

" Who is laughing now, Oom John ? " called out the
President.

The spirit of the boy was in the air that day about
the Canon of the Yellowstone, and the biggest boy of
us all was President Roosevelt.

The snow was getting so soft in the middle of the day
that our return to the Mammoth Hot Springs could
no longer be delayed. Accordingly, we were up in
the morning, and ready to start on the home journey,
a distance of twenty miles, by four o'clock. The snow
bore up the horses well till mid-forenoon, when it be-
gan to give way beneath them. But by very careful
management we pulled through without serious delay,
and were back again at the house of Major Pitcher
in time for luncheon, being the only outsiders who
had ever made the tour of the Park so early in the sea-
son.

A few days later I bade good-by to the President,
who went on his wav to California, while I made a
loop of travel to Spokane, and around through Idaho
and Montana, and had glimpses of the great, optimis-
tic, sunshiny West that I shall not soon forget.

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

In 1868 a party of three of us set out for a brief
trouting excursion to a body of water called Thomas's
Lake, situated in the southern Catskills. On this ex-
cursion, more particularly than on any other I have
ever undertaken, I was taught how poor an Indian I
should make, and what a ridiculous figure a party
of men may cut in the woods when the way is uncer-
tain and the mountains high.

We left our team at a farmhouse near the head of
the Mill Brook, one June afternoon, and with knap-
sacks on our shoulders struck into the woods at the
base of the mountain, hoping to cross the range that
intervened between us and the lake bv sunset. We
engaged a good-natured but rather indolent young
man, who happened to be stopping at the house, and
who had carried a knapsack in the Union armies, to
pilot us a couple of miles into the woods so as to guard
against any mistakes at the outset. It seemed the easi-
est thinor in the w^orld to find the lake. The lav of the
land was so simple, according to accounts, that I fell
sure I could go to it in the dark. " Go up this little
brook to its source on the side of the mountain," they
said. "The vallev that contains the lake heads di-
rectlv on the other side." What could be easier! Bu
on a little further inquiry, they said we should " bea.
well to the left " when we reached the top of the moun-
tain. This opened the doors again; "bearing well to
the left" was an uncertain performance in strange

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 73

woods. We might bear so well to the left that it would
bring us ill. But why bear to the left at all, if the lake
was directly opposite? Well, not quite opposite; a
little to the left. There were two or three other val-
leys that headed in near there. We could easily find
the right one. But to make assurance doubly sure,
we engaged a guide, as stated, to give us a good start,
and go with us beyond the bearing-to-the-left point.
He had been to the lake the winter before and knew
the way. Our course, the first half hour, was along
an obscure wood-road which had been used for draw-
ing ash logs off the mountain in winter. There was
some hemlock, but more maple and birch. The woods
were dense and free from underbrush, the ascent
gradual. Most of the way we kept the voice of the
creek in our ear on the right. I approached it once,
and found it swarming with trout. The water was as
cold as one ever need wish. After a while the ascent
grew steeper, the creek became a mere rill that issued
from beneath loose, moss-covered rocks and stones,
and with much labor and puflSng we drew ourselves
up the rugged declivity. Every mountain has its steep-
est point, which is usually near the summit, in keeping,
I suppose, with the providence that makes the darkest
hour just before day. It is steep, steeper, steepest,
till you emerge on the smooth level or gently rounded
space at the top, which the old ice-gods polished off
so long ago.

We found this mountain had a hollow in its back
where the ground was soft and swampy. Some gi-
gantic ferns, which we passed through, came nearly
to our shoulders. We passed also several patches of
swamp honeysuckles, red with blossoms.

74 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

Our guide at length paused on a big rock where
the land began to dip down the other way, and con-
cluded that he had gone far enough, and that we
would now have no difficulty in finding the lake. " It
must lie right down there," he said, pointing with his
hand. But it was plain that he was not quite sure in
his own mind. He had several times wavered in his
course, and had shown considerable embarrassment
when bearing to the left across the summit. Still we
thought little of it. We w^ere full of confidence, and,
bidding him adieu, plunged down the mountain-side,
following a spring run that we had no doubt led to
the lake.

In these woods, w^hich had a southeastern expos-
ure, I first began to notice the wood thrush. In com-
ing up the other side I had not seen a feather of any
kind, or heard a note. Now the golden irilUde-de
of the wood thrush sounded through the silent woods.
While looking for a fish-pole about half way down the
mountain, I saw a thrush's nest in a little sapling
about ten feet from the ground.

After continuing our descent till our only guide,
the spring run, became quite a trout brook, and its
tiny murmur a loud brawl, we began to peer anx-
iously through the trees for a glimpse of the lake, or
for some conformation of the land that would indicate
its proximity. An object which w^e vaguely discerned
in looking under the near trees and over the more dis-
tant ones proved, on further inspection, to be a patch
of ploughed ground. Presently we made out a burnt
fallow near it. This was a wet blanket to our enthu-
siasm. No lake, no sport, no trout for supper that
night. The rather indolent young man had either

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 75

played us a trick, or, as seemed more likely, had missed
the way. We were particularly anxious to be at the
lake between sundown and dark, as at that time the
trout jump most freely.

Pushing on, we soon emerged into a stumpy field,
at the head of a steep valley, which swept around
toward the w^est. About two hundred rods below us
was a rude log house, with smoke issuing from the
chimney. A boy came out and moved toward the
spring with a pail in his hand. We shouted to him,
when he turned and ran back into the house without
pausing to reply. In a moment, the whole family hastily
rushed into the yard, and turned their faces toward us.
If we had come down their chimney, they could not
have seemed more astonished. Not making out what
they said, I went dow^n to the house, and learned to my
chagrin that we were still on the Mill Brook side, having
crossed only a spur of the mountain. We had not
borne sufficiently to the left, so that the main range,
which, at the point of crossing, suddenly breaks off
to the southeast, still intervened between us and the
lake. We were about five miles, as the water runs,
from the point of starting, and over two from the lake.
We must go directly back to the top of the range where
the guide had left us, and then, by keeping well to the
left, we would soon come to a line of marked trees,
which would lead us to the lake. So, turning upon our
trail, we doggedly began the work of undoing what we
had just done, — in all cases a disagreeable task, in
this case a very laborious one also. It w^as after sunset
when we turned back, and before we had got half way
up the mountain it began to be quite dark. We were
often obliged to rest our packs against trees and take

76 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

breath, which made our progress slow. Finally a halt
was called, beside an immense flat rock which had
paused in its slide down the mountain, and we prepared
to encamp for the night. A fire was built, the rock
cleared off, a small ration of bread served out, our
accotftrements hung up out of the way of the hedge-
hogs that were supposed to infest the locality and then
we disposed ourselves for sleep. If the owls or porcu-
pines (and I think I heard one of the latter in the mid-
dle of the night) reconnoitred our camp, they saw a
buffalo robe spread upon a rock, with three old felt
hats arranged on one side, and three pairs of sorry-
looking cowhide boots protruding from the other.

When we lay down, there was apparently not a
mosquito in the woods; but the "no-see-ems," as
Thoreau's Indian aptly named the midges, soon found
us out, and after the fire had gone down annoyed us
much. My hands and wrists suddenly began to smart
and itch in a most unaccountable manner. My first
thought was that they had been poisoned in some way.
Then the smarting extended to my neck and face, even
to my scalp, when I began to suspect what was the
matter. So, wrapping myself up more thoroughly,
and stowino^ my hands awav as best I could, I tried to
sleep, being some time behind my companions, who
appeared not to mind the "no-see-ems." I was further
annoyed by some little irregularity on my side of the
couch. The chambermaid had not beaten it up well.
One huge lump refused to be mollified, and each
attempt to adapt it to some natural hollow in my own
body brought only a moment's relief. But at last I
got the better of this also and slept. Late in the night
I woke up, just in time to hear a golden-crowned thrush

IN THE WOODS

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 77

sing in a tree near by. It sang as loud and cheerily as
at midday, and I thought myself, after all, quite in luck.
Birds occasionally sing at night, just as the cock crows.
I have heard the hairbird, and the note of the kinirbird;
and the ruffed grouse frequently drums at night.

x\t the first faint signs of day a wood thrush sang,
a few rods below us. Then after a little delay, as the
gray light began to grow around, thrushes broke out
in full song in all parts of the woods. I thought I had
never before heard them sing so sweetly. Such a lei-
surely, golden chant ! — it consoled us for all we had
undergone. It was the first thing in order, — the
w^orms were safe till after this morning chorus. I judged
that the birds roosted but a few feet from the ground.
In fact, a bird in all cases roosts where it builds, and
the wood thrush occupies, as it were, the first story of
the woods.

There is something singular about the distribution
of the w^ood thrushes. At an earlier stage of my obser-
vations I should have been much surprised at finding
them in these woods. Indeed, I had stated in print on
two occasions that the wood thrush was not found in
the higher lands of the Catskills, but that the hermit
thrush and the veery, or Wilson's thrush, were common.
It turns out that this statement is only half true. The
w^ood thrush is found also, but is much more rare and
secluded in its habits than either of the others, being
seen only during the breeding season on remote moun-
tains, and then only on their eastern and southern
slopes. I have never yet in this region found the bird
spending the season in the near and familiar woods,
which is directly contrary to observations I have made
in other parts of the State. So different are the habits
of birds in different localities.

78 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

As soon as it was fairly light we were up and ready
to resume our march. A small bit of bread-and-butter
and a swallow or two of whiskey was all we had for
breakfast that morning. Our supply of each was very
limited, and we were anxious to save a little of both,
to relieve the diet of troUt to which we looked forward.

At an early hour we reached the rock where we had
parted with the guide, and looked around us into the
dense, trackless woods with many misgivings. To
strike out now on our own hook, where the way was
so blind and after the experience we had just had,
was a step not to be carelessly taken. The tops of these
mountains are so broad, and a short distance in the
woods seems so far, that one is bv no means master of
the situation after reaching the summit. And then
there are so many spurs and offshoots and changes of
direction, added to the impossibility of making any
generalization by the aid of the eye, that before one is
aware of it he is verv wide of his mark.

I remembered now that a young farmer of my ac-
quaintance had told me how he had made a long day's
march through the heart of this region, without path
or guide of any kind, and had hit his mark squarely.
He had been barkpeeling in Callikoon, — a famous
country for bark, — and, having got enough of it, he
desired to reach his home on Drv Brook without
making the usual circuitous journey between the two
places. To do this necessitated a march of ten or
twelve miles across several ranges of mountains and
through an unbroken forest, — a hazardous under-
taking in which no one would join him. Even the old
hunters who were familiar with the ground dissuaded
him and predicted the failure of his enterprise. But

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 79

having made up his mind, he possessed himself thor-
oughly of the topography of the country from the
aforesaid hunters, shouldered his axe, and set out,
holding a straight course through the woods, and
turning aside for neither swamps, streams, nor moun-
tains. When he paused to rest he would mark some
object ahead of him with his eye, in order that on get-
ting up again he might not deviate from his course.
His directors had told him of a hunter's cabin about
midw^ay on his route, which if he struck he might be
sure he w^as right. About noon this cabin was reached,
and at sunset he emerged at the head of Dry Brook.

After looking in vain for the line of marked trees, we
moved off to the left in a doubtful, hesitating manner,
keeping on the highest ground and blazing the trees as
we went. We were afraid to go down hill, lest we
should descend too soon; our vantage-ground was high
ground. A thick fog coming on, we were more bewil-
dered than ever. Still we pressed forward, climbing up
ledges and wading through ferns for about two hours,
when we paused by a spring that issued from beneath
an immense wall of rock that belted the highest part of
the mountain. There was quite a broad plateau here,
and the birch wood was very dense, and the trees of
unusual size.

After resting and exchanging opinions, we all con-
cluded that it was best not to continue our search
incumbered as we were; but we were not willing to
abandon it altogether, and I proposed to my com-
panions to leave them beside the spring w^ith our traps,
while I made one thorough and final effort to find the
lake. If I succeeded and desired them to come for-
ward, I was to fire my gun three times; if I failed and

BO A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

wished to return, I would fire it twice, they of course

responding.

So, fiUing my canteen from the spring, I set out
again, taking the spring run for my guide. Before I
had followed it two hundred yards it sank into the
ground at my feet. I had half a mind to be supersti-
tious and to believe that we were under a spell, since
our guides played us such tricks. However, I deter-
mined to put the matter to a further test, and struck
out boldly to the left. This seemed to be the keyword,
— to the left, to the left. The fog had now^ lifted, so
that I could form a better idea of the lay of the land.
Twice I looked down the steep sides of the mountain,
sorely tempted to risk a plunge. Still I hesitated and
kept along on the brink. As I stood on a rock deliber-
ating, I heard a crackling of the brush, like the tread
of some large game, on a plateau below me. Suspecting
the truth of the case, I moved stealthily down, and
found a herd of young cattle leisurely browsing. We
had several times crossed their trail, and had seen that
morning a level, grassy place on the top of the moun-
tain, where they had passed the night. Instead of being
frightened, as I had expected, they seemed greatly
delighted, and gathered around me as if to inquire
the tidings from the outer world, — perhaps the quo-
tations of the cattle market. They came up to me, and
eagerly licked my hand, clothes, and gun. Salt was
what they were after, and they were ready to swallow
anything that contained the smallest percentage of it.
They were mostly yearlings and as sleek as moles.
They had a very gamy look. We were afterwards told
that, in the spring, the farmers round about turn into
these woods their young cattle, which do not come out

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKII.LS 81

again till fall. They are then in good condition, — not
fat, like grass-fed cattle, but trim and supple, like deer.
Once a month the owner hunts them up and salts them.
Thev have their beats, and seldom wander beyond
well-defined limits. It was interesting to see them feed.
They browsed on the low limbs and bushes, and on the
various plants, munching at everything without any
apparent discrimination.

Thev attempted to follow me, but I escaped them
by clambering down some steep rocks. I now found
myself gradually edging down the side of the moun-
tain, keeping around it in a spiral manner, and scan-
ning the woods and the shape of the ground for some
encouraging hint or sign. Finally the w^oods became
more open, and the descent less rapid. The trees were
remarkably straight and uniform in size. Black birches,
the first I had seen, were very numerous. I felt encour-
aged. Listening attentively, I caught, from a breeze
just lifting the drooping leaves, a sound that I willingly
believed was made by a bullfrog. On this hint, I tore
dow^n through the woods at my highest speed. Then I
paused and listened again. This time there was no
mistaking it; it w^as the sound of frogs. Much elated,
I rushed on. By and by I could hear them as I ran.
Pthrung, pthrung, croaked the old ones; pug, pug,
shrilly joined in the smaller fry.

Then I caught, through the lower trees, a gleam
of blue, which I first thought was distant sky. A
second look and I knew it to be water, and in a moment
more I stepped from the woods and stood upon the
shore of the lake. I exulted silently. There it was at
last, sparkling in the morning sun, and as beautiful
as a dream. It was so good to come upon such open

82 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

space and such bright hues, after wandering in the
dim, dense woods! The eye is as dehghted as an
escaped bird, and darts gleefully from point to point.

The lake was a long oval, scarcely more than a mile
in circumference, with evenly wooded shores, which
rose gradually on all sides. After contemplating the
scene for a moment, I stepped back into the woods,
and, loading my gun as heavily as I dared, discharged it
three times. The reports seemed to fill all the moun-
tains with sound. The frogs quickly hushed, and I
listened for the response. But no response came. Then
I tried again and again, but without evoking an
answer. One of my companions, however, who had
climbed to the top of the high rocks in the rear of the
spring, thought he heard faintly one report. It seemed
an immense distance below him, and far around under
the mountain. I knew I had come a long way, and
hardly expected to be able to communicate with my
companions in the manner agreed upon. I therefore
started back, choosing my course without anv reference
to the circuitous route by which I had come, and load-
ing heavily and firing at intervals. I must have aroused
many long-dormant echoes from a Rip Van Winkle
sleep. As my powder got low, I fired and halloed alter-
nately, till I came near splitting both my throat and
gun. Finally, after I had begun to have a very ugly
feeling of alarm and disappointment, and to cast about
vaguely for some course to pursue in the emergency
that seemed near at hand, — namely, the loss of my
companions now I had found the lake, — a favoring
breeze brought me the last echo of a response. I
rejoined with spirit, and hastened with all speed in the
directiou whence the sound had come, but, after

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 83

repeated trials, failed to elicit another answering sound.
Th^s filled me with apprehension again. I feared that
my friends had been misled by the reverberations,
and I pictured them to myself hastening in the oppo-
site direction. Paying little attention to my course,
but paying dearly for my carelessness afterward, I
rushed forward to undeceive them. But they had not
been deceived, and in a few moments an answering
shout revealed them near at hand. I heard their
tramp, the bushes parted, and we three met again.

In answer to their eager inquiries, I assured them
that I had seen the lake, that it was at the foot of the
mountain, and that we could not miss it if w^e kept
straight down from where we then were.

My clothes were soaked with perspiration, but I
shouldered my knapsack with alacrity, and we began
the descent. I noticed that the woods were much
thicker, and had quite a different look from those I
had passed through, but thought nothing of it, as I
expected to strike the lake near its head, whereas I had
before come out at its foot. We had not gone far when
we crossed a line of marked trees, which my com-
panions were disposed to follow. It intersected our
course nearly at right angles, and kept along and up
the side of the mountain. My impression was that it
led up from the lake, and that by keeping bur own
course w^e should reach the lake sooner than if we fol-
lowed this line.

About half w^av dow^n the mountain, we could see
through the interstices the opposite slope. I encour-
aged my comrades by telling them that the lake was
betw^een us and that, and not more than half a mile
distant. We soon reached the bottom, where we found

84 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

a small stream and quite an extensive alder swamp,
evidently the ancient bed of a lake. I explained to my
half-vexed and half-incredulous companions that we
were probably above the lake, and that this stream
must lead to it. "Follow it," they said; "we will wait
here till we hear from you."

So I went on, more than ever disposed to believe
that we were under a spell, and that the lake had
slipped from my grasp after all. Seeing no favorable
sign as I went forward, I laid down my accoutrements,
and climbed a decaved beech that leaned out over the
swamp and promised a good view from the top. As I
stretched myself up to look around from the highest
attainable branch, there was suddenlv a loud crack
at the root. With a celeritv that would at least have
done credit to a bear, I regained the ground, having
caught but a momentary glimpse of the country, but
enough to convince me no lake was near. Leaving all
incumbrances here but my gun, I still pressed on,
loath to be thus baffled. After floundering through
another alder swamp for nearly half a mile, I flattered
myself that I was close on to the lake. I caught sight
of a low spur of the mountain sweeping around like a
half-extended arm, and I fondly imagined that within
its clasp was the object of my search. But I found only
more alder swamp. After this region was cleared, the
creek began to descend the mountain very rapidly. Its
banks became high and narrow, and it went whirling
awav with a sound that seemed to mv ears like a burst
of ironical laughter. I turned back with a feeling of
mingled disgust, shame, and vexation. In fact I was
almost sick, and when I reached my companions, after
an absence of nearly two hours, hungry, fatigued, and

A TRAMP IN TIIi: CATSKILLS

85

disheartened, I would have sold my interest in Thomas's
Lake at a very low figure. For the first time, I heartily
wished myself well out of the woods. Thomas might
keep his lake, and the enchanters guard his possession !
I doubted if he had ever found it the second time, or if
any one else ever had.

My companions, who were quite fresh, and who had
not felt the strain of baffled purpose as I had, assumed
a more encouraging tone. After I had rested a while,
and partaken sparingly of the bread and whiskey,
which in such an emergency — and only in such — is
a great improvement on bread and water, I agreed to
their proposition that we should make another attempt.
As if to reassure us, a robin sounded his cheery call
near by, and the winter wren, the first I had heard
in these woods, set his music-box going, which fairly
ran over with fine, gushing, lyrical sounds. There
can be no doubt but this bird is one of our finest
songsters. If it would only thrive and sing well when
caged, like the canary, how far it would surpass that
bird ! It has all the vivacity and versatility of the
canary, without any of its shrillness. Its song is indeed
a little cascade of melody.

We again retraced our steps, rolling the stone, as
it were, back up the mountain, determined to commit
ourselves to the line of marked trees. These we finally
reached, and, after exploring the country to the right,
saw that bearing to the left was still the order. The
trail led up over a gentle rise of ground, and in less
than twenty minutes we were in the woods I had passed
through when I found the lake. The error I had made
was then plain; we had come off the mountain a few
paces too far to the right, and so had passed down oi^

86 A TRAMP IX THE CATSKILLS

the wrong side of the ridge, into what we afterward
learned was the valley of xAlder Creek.

We now made good time, and before many minutes
I again saw the mimic sky glance through the trees.
As we approached the lake a solitary woodchuck, the
first wild animal we had seen since entering the woods,
sat crouched upon the root of a tree a few feet from the
water, apparently completely non-plussed by the unex-
pected appearance of danger on the land side. All
retreat was cut off, and he looked his fate in the face
without flinching. I slaughtered him just as a savage
would have done, and from the same motive, — I
wanted his carcass to eat.

The mid-afternoon sun was now shining upon the
lake, and a low, steady breeze drove the little waves
rocking to the shore. A herd of cattle were browsing
on the other side, and the bell of the leader sounded
across the water. In these solitudes its clang was wild
and musical.

To try the trout was the first thing in order. On a
rude raft of logs which we found moored at the shore,
and which with two aboard shipped about a foot of
water, we floated out and wet our first flv in Thomas's
Lake; but the trout refused to jump, and, to be frank,
not more than a dozen and a half were caught during
our stay. Only a week previous, a party of three had
taken in a few hours all the fish thev could carrv out
of the woods, and had nearly surfeited their neighbors
with trout. But from some cause thev now refused to

I.'

rise, or to touch any kind of bait : so we fell to catching
the sunfish, which were small but very abundant.
Their nests were all along shore. A space about the
size of a breakfast-plate was cleared of sediment and

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 87

decayed vegetable matter, revealing the pebbly bot-
tom, fresh and bright, with one or two fish suspended
over the centre of it, keeping watch and ward. If an
intruder approached, they would dart at him spitefully.
These fish have the air of bantam cocks, and, with their
sharp, prickly fins and spines and scaly sides, must be
ugly customers in a hand-to-hand encounter with other
finny warriors. To a hungry man they look about as
unpromising as hemlock slivers, so thorny and thin are
they; yet there is sweet meat in them, as we found that
day.

Much refreshed, I set out with the sun low in the
west to explore the outlet of the lake and try for trout
there, while my companions made further trials in
the lake itself. The outlet, as is usual in bodies of
water of this kind, was very gentle and private. The
stream, six or eight feet wide, flowed silently and
evenly along for a distance of three or four rods,
when it suddenly, as if conscious of its freedom, took
a leap down some rocks. Thence, as far as I fol-
lowed it, its descent was very rapid through a con-
tinuous succession of brief falls like so many steps
down the mountain. Its appearance promised more
trout than I found, though I returned to camp with
a very respectable string.

Toward sunset I went round to explore the inlet,
and found that as usual the stream wound leisurely
through marshy ground. The water being much colder
than in the outlet, the trout were more plentiful. As
I was picking my way over the miry ground and
through the rank growths, a ruffed grouse hopped
up on a fallen branch a few paces before me, and, jerk-
ing his tail, threatened to take flight. But as I was

88 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

at that moment gunless and remained stationary, he
presently jumped down and walked away.

A seeker of birds, and ever on the alert for some
new acquaintance, my attention was arrested, on first
entering the swamp, by a bright, lively song, or war-
ble, that issued from the branches overhead, and that
was entirelv new to me. though there was something
in the tone of it that told me the bird was related to
the wood-wagtail and to the water-wagtail or thrush.
The strain was emphatic and quite loud, like the ca-
nary's, but very brief. The bird kept itself well secreted ^
in the upper branches of the trees, and for a long time
eluded my eye. I passed to and fro several times, and
it seemed to break out afresh as I approached a cer-
tain little bend in the creek, and to cease after I had
got beyond it; no doubt its nest was somewhere in the
vicinity. After some delay the bird was sighted and
brought down. It proved to be the small, or north-
ern, water-thrush (called also the New York water-
thrush), — a new bird to me. In size it was notice-
ably smaller than the large, or Louisiana, water-thrush,
as described by Audubon, but in other respects its
general appearance was the same. It was a great treat
to me, and again I felt myself in luck.

This bird was unknown to the older ornithologists,
and is but poorly described by the new. It builds a
mossy nest on the ground, or under the edge of a de-
caved log. A correspondent writes me that he has
found it breeding on the mountains in Pennsylvania.
The large-billed water-thrush is much the super ioi
songster, but the present species has a very bright
and cheerful strain. The specimen I saw, contrary
to the habits of the family, kept in the treetops like a

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 89

warbler, and seemed to be engaged in catching in-
sects.

The birds were unusually plentiful and noisy about
the head of this lake; robins, blue jays, and wood-
peckers greeted me with their familiar notes. The
blue jays found an owl or some wild animal a short
distance above me, and, as is their custom on such
occasions, proclaimed it at the top of their voices, and
kept on till the darkness began to gather in the woods.

I also heard here, as I had at two or three other
points in the course of the day, the peculiar, resonant
hammering of some species of woodpecker upon the
hard, dry limbs. It was unlike any sound of the kind
I had ever before heard, and, repeated at intervals
through the silent woods, was a very marked and char-
acteristic feature. Its peculiarity was the ordered suc-
cession of the raps, which gave it the character of a
premeditated performance. There were first three
strokes following each other rapidly, then two much
louder ones with longer intervals between them. I
heard the drumming here, and the next day at sun-
set at Furlow Lake, the source of Dry Brook, and in
no instance was the order varied. There was melody
in it, such as a woodpecker knows how to evoke from
a smooth, dry branch. It suggested something quite
IS pleasing as the liveliest bird-song, and was if any-
thing more woodsy and wild. As the yellow-bellied
woodpecker was the most abundant species in these
woods, I attributed it to him. It is the one sound that
still links itself with those scenes in my mind.

At sunset the grouse began to drum in all parts of
the woods about the lake. I could hear five at one
time, thump, thump, thump, thump, thr-r-r-r-r-r-rr.

90 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

It was a homely, welcome sound. As I returned to
camp at twilight, along the shore of the lake, the frogs
also were in full chorus. The older ones ripped out
their responses to each other with terrific force and
volume. I know of no other animal capable of giv-
ing forth so much sound, in proportion to its size, as
a frog. Some of these seemed to bellow as loud as a
two-year-old bull. They were of immense size, and
very abundant. No frog-eater had ever been there.
Near the shore we felled a tree which reached far out
in the lake. Upon the trunk and branches the frogs
had soon collected in large numbers, and gamboled
and splashed about the half-submerged top, like a
parcel of schoolboys, making nearly as much noise.

After dark, as I was frying the fish, a panful of the
largest trout was accidentally capsized in the fire. With
rueful countenances we contemplated the irreparable
loss our commissariat had sustained by this mishap;
but remembering there was virtue in ashes, we poked
the half-consumed fish from the bed of coals and ate
them, and they were good.

We lodged that night on a brush-heap and slept
soundly. The green, yielding beech-twigs, covered
with a buffalo robe, were equal to a hair mattress.
The heat and smoke from a large fire kindled in
the afternoon had banished every "no-see-em" from
the locality, and in the morning the sun was above the
mountain before we awoke.

I immediately started again for the inlet, and went
far up the stream toward its source. A fair string of
trout for breakfast was my reward. The cattle with
the bell were at the head of the valley, where they had
passed the night. Most of them were two-year-old

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

91

steers. They came up to me and begged for salt,
and scared the fish by their importunities.

We finished our bread that morning, and ate every
fish we could catch, and about ten o'clock prepared
to leave the lake. The weather had been admirable,
and the lake was a gem, and I would gladly have spent
a week in the neighborhood; but the question of sup-
plies was a serious one, and would brook no delay.

When we reached, on our return, the point where
we had crossed the line of marked trees the day be-
fore, the question arose whether we should still trust
ourselves to this line, or follow our own trail back to
the spring and the battlement of rocks on the top of
the mountain, and thence to the rock where the guide
had left us. We decided in favor of the former course.
After a march of three quarters of an hour the blazed
trees ceased, and we concluded we were near the point
at which we had parted with the guide. So we built
a fire, laid down our loads, and cast about on all sides
for some clew as to our exact locality. Nearly an hour
was consumed in this manner and without any result.
I came upon a brood of young grouse, which diverted
me for a moment. The old one blustered about at a

m

furious rate, trying to draw all attention to herself,
while the young ones, which were unable to fly, hid
themselves. She whined like a dog in great distress,
and dragged herself along apparently with the great-
est difficulty. As I pursued her, she ran very nimbly,
and presently flew a few yards. Then, as I went on,
she flew farther and farther each time, till at last she
got up, and went humming through the woods as if
she had no interest in them. I went back and caught
one of the young, which had simply squatted close to

92 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

the leaves. I took it up and set it on the palm of my
hand, which it hugged as closely as if still upon the
ground. I then put it in my coatsleeve, when it ran
and nestled in my armpit.

When we met at the sign of the smoke, opinions
differed as to the most feasible course. There was no
doubt but that we could get out of the woods; but we
wished to get out speedily, and as near as possible to
the point where we had entered. Half ashamed of our
timidity and indecision, we finally tramped away
back to where we had crossed the line of blazed trees,
followed our old trail to the spring on the top of the
range, and, after much searching and scouring to the
right and left, found ourselves at the very place we
had left two hours before. Another deliberation and
a divided council. But something must be done. It
was then mid-afternoon, and the prospect of spending
another night on the mountains, without food or drink,
was not pleasant. So we moved down the ridge. Here
another line of marked trees was found, the course
of which formed an obtuse angle with the one we had
followed. It kept on the top of the ridge for perhaps
a mile, when it entirely disappeared, and we were as
much adrift as ever. Then one of the party swore an
oath, and said he was going out of those woods, hit
or miss, and, wheeling to the right, instantly plunged
over the brink of the mountain. The rest followed,
but would fain have paused and ciphered away at
their own uncertainties, to see if a certaintv could not
be arrived at as to where we would come out. But
our bold leader was solving the problem in the right
way. Down and down and still down we went, as if
we were to bring up in the bowels of the earth. It was

A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 93

by far the steepest descent we had made, and we felt a
grim satisfaction in knowing that we could not retrace
our steps this time, be the issue what it might. As
we paused on the brink of a ledge of rocks, we chanced
to see through the trees distant cleared land. A house
or barn also was dimly descried. This was encour-
aging; but we could not make out whether it was on
Beaver Kill or Mill Brook or Dry Brook, and did not
long stop to consider where it was. We at last brought
up at the bottom of a deep gorge, through which flowed
a rapid creek that literally swarmed with trout. But we
were in no mood to catch tbem, and pushed on along
the channel of the stream, sometimes leaping from
rock to rock, and sometimes splashing heedlessly
through the water, and speculating the while as to
where we should probably come out. On the Beaver
Kill, my companions thought; but, from the position
of the sun, I said, on the Mill Brook, about six mile^
below our team; for I remembered having seen, in
coming up this stream, a deep, wild valley that led
up into the mountains, like this one. Soon the banks
of the stream became lower, and we moved into the
woods. Here we entered upon an obscure wood-road,
which presently conducted us into the midst of a vast
hemlock forest. The land had a gentle slope, and we
wondered why the lumbermen and barkmen who prowl
through these woods had left this fine tract untouched.
Beyond this the forest was mostlv birch and maple.
We were now close to the settlement, and began
to hear human sounds. One rod more, and we were
cut of the woods. It took us a moment to comprehend
the scene. Things looked very strange at first; but
quickly they began to change and to put on familiar

94 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS

features. Some magic scene-shifting seemed to take
place before my eyes, till, instead of the unknown set-
tlement which I at first seemed to look upon, there
stood the farmhouse at w^hich w^e had stopped two
days before, and at the same moment we heard the
stamping of our team in the barn. We sat down and
laughed heartily over our good luck. Our desperate
venture had resulted better than we had dared to hope,
and had shamed our wisest plans. At the house our
arrival had been anticipated about this time, and din-
ner was being put upon the table.

It was then five o'clock, so that we had been in the
woods just forty-eight hours; but if time is only phe-
nomenal, as the philosophers say, and life only in feel-
ing, as the poets aver, we were some months, if not
years, older at that moment than we had been two
days before. Yet younger, too, — though this be a
paradox, — for the birches had infused into us some
Di their ow^n suppleness and strength.

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