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OLD PLYMOUTH
TRAILS
BY
WINTHROP PACKARD
Author of "White Mountain Trails," "Literary
Pilgrimages of a Naturalist," etc.
ILLUSTRATED
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
.IC LIBRARY
87^4.59
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Copyright, 1920,
By WINTHROP PACKARD
PBESB OF OEO. B. ELLIS CO., BOSTON
FOREWORD
The author wishes to express his thanks to the
editors of the Boston Evening Transcript and the
Atlantic Monthly for permission to reprint in this
volume matter originally contributed to the columns
of that paper and magazine; and to A. S. Burbank
of Plymouth, I. Chester Horton, and Howard S.
Adams for permission to reproduce various illus-
trations.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Old Plymouth Trails ...... i
II Plymouth Mayflowers 12
III Unbuilding a Building 25
IV Forefathers' Day 39
V The Singing Pines 52
VI Nantucket in April 65
VII Footing It Across the Cape .... 81
VIII Wild Apple Trees 94
IX Midsummer Moonlight 108
X Turtle-Head and Jewel-Weed . . .122
XI The Way of a Woodchuck .... 136
XII Along the Salt Marshes 149
XIII Fishing "Down Outside" 163
XIV Voices of the Brookside 177
XV Ghosts of the Northeaster . . . .187
XVI JoTHAM Stories 201
XVII Good-Bye to Summer 214
XVIII Mystical Pastures 228
XIX White Pine Groves 242
XX The Pasture in November 256
XXI Red Cedar Lore 270
XXII Aunt Sue's Snowbank 283
XXIII Sports of the Winter Woods .... 297
XXIV Coasting on Ponkapoag 310
XXV Pickerel Fishing 324
XXVI Yule Fires 339
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Mayflower at Plymouth . . . Frontispiece
The First Pilgrim Trail 0pp. 8
Plymouth as the Pilgrims made it . . . lo
Leyden Street to-day from Burial Hill . i6
Birds of the Plymouth Woods, Wise and
Otherwise 20
BiLLLNGTON PaTH ALONG THE B ORDER OF
"BiLLiNGTON Sea" 42
The Stern and Rock-bound Coast which
greeted the pilgrims 44
Bayberry and Pitch Pine along a Nan-
tucket Trail 70
A Nantucket Lane 78
Along a Byway of the Cape 84
Dusty Miller blossoming among the Cape
Dunes 86
Tele Sun sifting and winnowing his Gold
FOR Sunset no
Sunrise over the Pond 112
Rounding the Breakwater at Nantucket
within call of the old Lisbon Bell . . 116
Captain's Hill from Marsh Margin .... 130
Along the Salt Marshes 156
Outward bound in Plymouth Harbor . . ' 166
Geese on the Sand Spit at Plymouth . . 180
Wild Geese in Flight over the Pond . . 204
The Fox that slips along the Winding
Paths at Dawn 260
A Cape Cod Cedar Centuries Old . . . 274
The Pines in Winter 286
Deer in the Winter Woods 300
Pickerel from an Old Colony Pond , , , 326
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
CHAPTER I
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
*'The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed."
So sang Felicia D. Hemans in the early years
of the last century and she has been much derided
by the thoughtless and irreverent who have said
that the landing of the Pilgrims was not on a
stern and rock-bound coast. Such scoffers evi-
dently never sailed in by White Horse beach and
"Hither Manomet" when a winter northeaster
was shouldering the deep sea tides up against the
cliff and a surly gale snatched the foam from
high-crested waves and sent it singing and sting-
ing inland. Could they have done this it would
have been easy to understand that the coast here
is stern and rock-bound in very truth. The rocks
are not those of solid granite ledges, continuous
2 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
portions of the great earth's lithosphere of which
the coast is built farther north, at Scituate, Na-
hant, Rockport and farther on; but it is rock-
bound with massed granite boulders, glacier
rounded, water-worn, but inexpressibly stern.
All Plymouth is made up of the results of pil-
grimage. How many scores of fathoms deep the
real Plymouth shore lies I do not know. It is
down there somewhere where it cooled into
bathylithic crust back in the gray dawn of time
when the earth was made. There it is part of
the same ledge of which Scituate and Cohasset
are built. All above that is terminal moraine,
rock detritus piled upon rock foundation by the
glacier. Plymouth Rock itself thus came joy
riding from some ledge up Boston way, alighting
from this first and greatest New England Trans-
portation System only a few hundred thousand
years before Mary Chilton arrived to set foot
upon it.
Tide and tempest grind pebbles to shifting
sand and give and take away beach and bar
yearly, but they do not move the boulders very
fast. Manomet shore and even Plymouth beach
are rock-bound with these, large and small, today
as they were when the Pilgrims fought their des-
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 3
perate, sea-beset way by them through the dusk
of a winter northeaster and froze in safety under
the lee of Clark's Island.
He who would see Plymouth and the Pilgrim
land about it as the Pilgrims saw it may do so.
Nature holds grimly onto her own and sedulously
heals the scars that man makes. Beat to wind-
ward in the December twilight following that first
trail of the Pilgrim pinnace, listen to the sullen
boom of the breakers on the cliff, hear the growl
of the surf-mauled pebbles on Plymouth beach,
feel the sting of the freezing spray and the bitter
grip of the north wind and you shall find this first
Pilgrim trail the same today as it was three hun-
dred years ago.
Plymouth is a manufacturing city, a residence
town, a resort and a thriving business centre all
in one. Except in its carefully preserved shrines
you shall find little suggestion of the Pilgrims
themselves, but you have only to step out of town
to find their very land all about you, traces of
their occupancy, the very marks of their feet,
worn in the earth itself. A trail cuts easily into
the forest mould. Once well worn there cen-
turies fail to remove it. The paths the Pilgrims
trod radiate from Plymouth to a score of places
4 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
far and near. They tramped to Sandwich and
the canal region, to Middlebor.o, Bridgewater and
Duxbury as we know them now, to Boston;
sooner or later to all the world. Some of the
trails they trod may be forgotten, some of them
are main-travelled highways, others remain nar-
row footpath ways through a country beautiful
and often as unsophisticated as it was when the
feet of the first Pilgrims pressed them. Therein
lies for all the world the chief charm of the Old
Colony region. Along the old Pilgrim trails you
may step from modern culture and its acme of
civilization through the pasture lands of the Pil-
grims into glimpses of the forest primeval. The
Pilgrims' boulders, their kettle-hole ponds, mossy
swamps and ferny hillsides, here and there their
very forest trees, await you still. For Indian
and panther you need not look; wolf or bear you
will hardly see ; the wild turkeys are gone ; other-
wise the wild life of the forest remains.
The first Pilgrim land trail is today Leyden
street, leading from the water's edge to their
fort on Burial Hill. You may follow it, though
the marks of Pilgrim feet are buried beneath city
pavement, save perhaps on the crest of the hill
itself, and though bluebird and robin flutter shyly
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 5
to its upper end in spring as did their pilgrim
fathers before them, the arbutus, from earHest
days to this the Plymouth flower, no longer
grows on its margin. He who has not longed to
pick a mayflower in Plymouth on Mayday is not
a New Englander. That is perhaps why the ar-
butus no longer grows along byways of the old
town as once it did. Instead you must seek the
Pilgrim paths out of town to find it.
One of these leads down along shore, over
Manomet and on through Plynrouth woods to-
ward the old trysting place with the Dutch trad-
ers. The men of New Amsterdam, journeying
in boats along Long Island Sound and up Buz-
zards Bay met the Plymouth men yearly and held
a mcfst decorous carnival of barter. Tradition
has it that the Plymouth men made the trip by
sea to the nearest point on the Bay shore. I do
not know if the meeting place is known, but I
know a moss-grown and gnarled red cedar on the
margin of Buttermilk Bay, as we now call it,
which I am sure was growing there when the
first swapping of commodities took place and in
the shade of whose branches the grave and sturdy
traders may have sat.
Here and there in Pilgrim land you find a tree
6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
like that, one that by some chance the axe of the
woodman has spared as one generation of wood
cutters followed another, that still stands where
the seed fell, no man knows how many centuries
ago. We have trees in eastern Massachusetts to
whom a thousand years is but as yesterday when
it is passed, many on which the centuries have
rested lightly. I think this Onset cedar one of
these.
The road that leads from Plymouth to it is
vexed daily by innumerable wheels.; of a summer
holiday the wayside watcher may count the mo-
tors by the thousand; yet you have but to step
a rod or two off its tarred, tire-beaten surface
to find wild woodland as primitive as it was three
hundred years ago. The spring seeking motor-
ist finds his first mayflowers there as the grade
leads up Manomet heights and may expect them
by the roadside anywhere, after that. The old
trail to Sandwich saunters along here, but those
who built for modern traffic took little heed of
old-time footpath ways. They gouged the hills,
they filled the hollows and drew their long black
scar behind for mile after mile.
Like the deer and the wild fowl the old trails
care little for this. They wander on their own
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 7
gentle, untrammelled way, hither and yon, here
beset by heavy forest growth, there a tangle of
greenbrier and scrub oaks, losing you often, pick-
ing you up again when you least expect it, but
always leading you off the humdrum highway of
today into the gentle wildernesses of old time ro-
mance. You find them margined with marks of
the pioneer. It may be just a hollow which was
once his tiny cellar-hole or a rectangular mound
where the logs of his cabin tumbled into the
mould, perhaps a moss-grown, weatherbeaten
house itself with its barberry bush or its lilac
still holding firmly where the pioneer house-
holder set it. These old trails of the Plymouth
woods may be just of one family's making, lead-
ing from house to pasture and woodlot, or
they may be bits of an old-time footpath way
first worked out by the Indians themselves
no one knows how many centuries ago. Find
me an eskar in Plymouth county, a ''hog-
back ridge" as our forbears were wont to
call it, and the chances are fair that along its
narrow summit edge I'll show you an Indian
trail. Sometimes the Pilgrim paths adopted
these and later made them roadways.
As you go southward in this region you find
8 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
traces of an ancient type of fencing that I have
not seen elsewhere. It may have been a hedge-
maker's trick, brought from the old country.
The Cape pioneers slashed young white oaks
growing along the road margin, bent them, say
two feet above the ground, without severing, and
laid them level, the tops bound tight with withes
to the next trunk. Thus they had a fence that
would restrain cattle and that grew stouter as the
years went by. You find these trees growing
thus today, their trunks a foot or two in diame-
ter, bending at right angles just above ground
and stretching horizontally, while what were once
limbs now grow trunks from the grotesque butt.
A remnant of fence like this along an almost ob-
literated trail in an ancient wood gives a hob-
goblin character to the place.
The heath family, all the way from clethra
which begins it to cranberry which ends it, dwells
in beauty and diversity all about in the Plymouth
woods, making them fragrant the year round.
Some of them help feed the world, notably the
cranberries and the huckleberries of a score of
varieties from the pale, inch high, earliest sweet
blueberries growing on the dry hillsides to the
giants of the deep swamp, hanging out of reach
THE NEW YORI^
PUBLIC LIBRARY
,.o. JR, LENO^X
TILDEJN FOUNDATIONS j
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 9
above your head sometimes and as big as a thumb
end. These provide manna for all who will
gather it, from late June till early September,
when the checkerberries ripen, to hang on all
winter. Others make the world better for their
beauty and fragrance and of these the ground
laurel, the trailing arbutus, the mayflower, is best
known and loved.
It is easy to fancy some- sombre Pilgrim,
weary with the woes of that first winter, his
heart hungry for "the may" of English hedge-
rows, stepping forth some raw April morning
which as yet showed no sign of opening spring
buds, stopping as his feet rustled in brown oak
leaves up Town Brook way, puzzled by the en-
dearing, enticing fragrance on the wings of the
raw wind. I always think of him as stopping for
a moment to dream of home, looking about in a
discouraged way for hawthorn which he knows
is not there, then spying the little cluster of ever-
green leaves with their pink and white blossons
nestling among the oak leaves at his very feet
and kneeling to pluck and sniff them in some-
thing like adoration. It may not have been that
way at all, but someone found that first may-
flower and loved and named it.
lo OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
The world at large, hurtling through Plymouth
in its high-powered motor cars, stops along the
road over Manomet and finds its arbutus there
each May. I like to look for mine along the path
that Billington took to his "sea," a way that leads
out of Leyden street and up along Town Brook.
I think the second oldest of the Plymouth land
trails lies up that way. If the first was to and
from the fort the second surely lay up along the
brook, and I have an idea the Indians had pre-
ceded them in the making of this.
A great terminal moraine once blocked off Bil-
lington sea from the ocean, but Town Brook re-
leased it. Long before the Pilgrims came it had
cut its valley through the great wall of gravel and
occupied it in peace till latter day highways and
factories came to vex it. In spite of these, un-
hampered bits of the original brook show in
Plymouth itself and you are not far out of town
before you see more of it.
It flows out of the "sea" unhindered now save
by pickerel weed and sagittaria, rush and
meadow grasses, and in woodsy places by brook
alder, clethra, huckleberry and spice-bush that
lean into it as they wrestle with greenbrier and
clematis. The mayflower snuggles into the
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS ii
leaves along its drier upper margins, here and
there, and is to be found on the borders of the
**'sea" more plentifully. Plymouth has done well
in making of this region a park, beautifying it
mainly by letting it alone, merely cutting new
Pilgrim trails through it. Billington's path
along the pond shore is thus made easy for your
feet and is marked with his name that you may
not miss it. But if you would see the real Bil-
lington path, made for him by generations of In-
dians before his day but the one that I believe he
trod, you will look nearer the water's edge.
There, tangled amidst undergrowth now, buried
deep in brown autumn leaves, it is yet visible
enough, cut into the soft sand of the pond bank.
In places it is cut deep. In places it is all but ob-
literated or vanishes altogether for a little way,
perhaps divides into two or three as the local
needs of moccasined travellers called for, but all
along the pond margin it goes. This is an old
Plymouth trail indeed, linking the Plymouth of
today with that of the time of the Pilgrims, and
long before. There are many such that lead out
of Plymouth, glimpsing for us the world of three
hundred years ago mirrored in the eyes, the ideas,
the ideals of today. Let us search them out.
CHAPTER II
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS
The first day on which one might hope for
mayflowers came to Plymouth in late April. The
day before a bitter northeaster had swept through
the town, a gale like the December one in which
the Pilgrim's shallop first weathered Manomet
head and with broken mast limped in under the
lee of Clark's Island. No promise of May had
been in this wild storm that keened the dead on
Burial Hill, yet this day that followed was to be
better than a promise. It was May itself, come
a few days ahead of the calendar, so changeful is
April In Pilgrim land. This gale, ashamed of it-
self, ceased its outcry in the darkness of full
night and the chill of a white frost followed on all
the land.
In the darkest hour of this night, I saw a thin
point of light rise out of the mystery of the sea
far to the eastward, the tiny sail of the shallop
of the old moon, blown landward by little winds
of dawn, making port on the shore of "hither
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS 13
Manomet." In 'the velvety blackness of this ul-
timate hour of night the slender sail curved
sweetly backward toward the sea, and the shallop
seemed drawn to the land by a lodestone, as was
the ship of Sindbad the Sailor, and when it mag-
ically climbed the dark headland and sailed away
into the sk}^ above, it drew out of the sea behind
it the first light of glorious morning. From
Manomet head to the Gurnet the horizon showed
a level sea line of palest garnet that deepened,
moment by moment, till the coming sun arched it
with rose and bounded from it, a flattened glob-
ule of ruby fire. I like to think that the path
of gold with which the sun glorified the stippled
steel of the sea was the very one by which the
first Mayflower came in from Provincetown, the
sails nobly set and the ship pressing onward to
that memorable anchorage within the protecting
white arm of the sandspit.
I like to think that the sweet curve of the old
moon's slender sail sways in by Manomet each
month in loving remembrance of that other shal-
lop that so magically won by the roar of the
breakers on the dark point and brought the
simple record of faith and courage for our loving
remembrance. But whether these things are so
14 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
or not I know that the very first rays of the morn-
ing sun pass in level neglect over the bay and the
town to lay a wreath of light on the brow of
Burial Hill and touch with celestial gold the
simple granite shaft that stands over the grave of
William Bradford, historian of Plymouth Colony
and writer of the first American book. Such
is the unfailing ceremony of sunrise in Plymouth,
and such it has been since the first Pilgrim was
laid to rest on the hill which lifts its head above
the roofs and spires to the free winds of the
world.
Plymouth is fortunate in this hill. It bears
the very presence of its founders above the en-
terprise and ferment of a modern town which
grows rapidly toward city conditions, a hill which
is set upon a city and cannot be hid. Factories
and city blocks and all the wonders of steam
and electrical contrivance which would have
astounded and amazed Bradford and his fellows
are common in Plymouth today as they are com-
mon to all cities and towns of a vast country,
yet the graves of the simple pioneers rise above
them as the story of their lives transcends in in-
terest that of all others that have come after
them. The book that Bradford wrote, as the
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS 15
tales that Homer told, will last as long as books
are read. Plymouth may pass, as Troy did, but
the story of its heroes will remain. Bradford's
book, which was our first, may well, at the end of
time, be rated our greatest.
The trailing arbutus is peculiarly the flower of
Plymouth. Not that it grows there alone, indeed
within easy reach of the landing place of the
Pilgrims it is not easy now to find it. Once, no
doubt, it blossomed about the feet of the pioneers,
sending up its fragrance to them as they trod
sturdily along their first street and through their
new found fields that first spring after their ar-
rival. My, but their hearts must have been
homesick for the English May they had left be-
hind! and in memory of the pink and white of
the hawthorn hedges they called this pink and
white flower which peered from the oval-leaved
vines trailed about their feet, mayflower. It
surely must have grown on the slopes of Burial
Hill, down toward Town Brook, but now one will
look in vain for it there. I found my first blos-
som of the year by following the brook up to its
headwaters in Billington Sea. The brook itself
is greatly changed since Bradford's day. Its
waters are now held back by dams where it winds
i6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
through the sand hills and one mill after another
sits by the side of the ponds thus formed. Yet
the "sea" itself must be much the same in itself
and its surroundings as it was in Billington's
time. Nor do I wholly believe the legend which
has it that Billington thought it was a sea in very
truth. It is too obviously a pond to have de-
ceived even this unsophisticated wanderer. It
covers but little over three hundred acres includ-
ing its islands and winding coves.
I think, rather, its name was given in good
natured derision of Billington and his idea of the
importance of his discovery, a form of quaint hu-
mor not unknown in the descendants to the Pil-
grims of this day. Yet the waters of the little
winding pond are as clear as those of the sea
which breaks on the rocks of Manomet or the
Gurnet, and the hilly shores, close set with de-
ciduous growth, are almost as wild as they were
then. The robins that greeted the dawn on
Burial Hill sang here at midday, blackbirds chor-
used, and song sparrows sent forth their tinkling
songs from the shrubby growths. Plymouth
woods, here at least, are a monotony of oaks.
Yet here and there in the low places a maple has
Lexden Street To-day from Burial II ill
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS 17
become a burning bush of ruby flame, and along
the bog edges the willows are in the full glory of
their yellow plumes. The richest massed color-
ing one can see in the region today, though, is
that of the cranberry bogs. Looking away from
the sun the thick-set vines are a level floor of rich
maroon, not a level color but a background show-
ing the brush marks of a master painter's hand.
Toward the sun this color lightens and silvers to
tiny jewel points where the light glances from
glossy leaf tips. The later spring growth will
fleck the bogs with greens, but the maroon back-
ground will still be there.
The arbutus does not trail in all spots beneath
the oaks, even in this secluded wilderness.
Sometimes one thinks he sees broad stretches
green with its rounded leaves only to find last
year's checkerberries grinning coral red at him,
instead of the soft pink tints and spicy odor of
the Epigaea blooms. Sometimes the pyrola simu-
lates it and cracks the gloss on its leaves with a
wan wintergreen smile at the success of the de-
ception. But after a little the eye learns to dis-
criminate in winter greens and to know the out-
line of the arbutus leaf and its grouping from
that of the others. Then success in the hunt
i8 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
should come rapidly. After all Epigaea and
Gaultheria are vines closely allied, and it is no
wonder that there is a family resemblance. The
checkerberry's spicy flavor permeates leaves, stem
and fruit. That of the arbutus seems more vola-
tile and ethereal. It concentrates in the blossom
and lifts from 'that to course the air invisibly an
aromatic fragrance that the little winds of the
woods sometimes carry far to those who love it,
over hill and dale. Given a day of bright sun
and slow moving soft air and one may easily hunt
the Plymouth mayflower by scent. Even after
the grouped leaves are surely sighted the flowers
are still to be found. The winds of winter have
strewn the ground deep with oak leaves and half
buried the vines in them for safety from the cold.
Out from among these the blossoms seem to peer
shyly, like sweet little Pilgrim children, ready to
draw back behind their mother's aprons if they
do not like the appearance of the coming
stranger. Perhaps they do withdraw at discre-
tion, and this is very likely why some people who
come from far to hunt find many mayflowers,
while others get few or none.
Just as the Mayflower in which the Pilgrims
sailed to Plymouth seems to have been but one
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS 19
of many English ships of that name, so the trail-
ing arbutus is not the only flower to be called
mayfloAver in New England. The mayflower of
the English fields and hedgerows was preemi-
nently the hawthorn, known often just as ''the
may." But there is a species of bitter cress in
England with showy flowers, Cardamine praten-
sis, which is also called mayflower and the name
is given to the yellow bloom of the marsh
marigold, Caltha palustria, often known, less
lovingly, as "blobs." The Caltha is common
to both Europe and America and, though it
is often hereabout know^n by the nickna^ne of
''cowslip" which the early English settlers seem
to have given it, I do not hear it called mayflower.
In localities where the arbutus is not common
the name ma}'flower is here most commonly given
to the pink and white Anemone nemorosa, the
wind flower of the meadow margins and low
woods, and to the rock saxifrage, Saxifraga vir-
giniensis, both of which are among the earliest
blossoms of the month.
None can visit Plymouth without wishing to
climb the bold promontory of "hither Manomet."
The legend has it that Eric the Red, the Viking
who explored New England shores centuries be-
20 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
fore the first Englishman heard of them, made
this his burial hill and that somewhere beneath
its forests his bones lie to this day. I sought
long for mayflowers on the seaward slopes and
in the rough gullies of these "highlands of
Plymouth," I did not find them there.
On the landward slopes, gentler and less wind-
swept, down toward the "sweet waters" that flow
from inland to the sea, you may with patient
search find many. But the heights shall reward
you, if not with mayflowers with greater and
more lasting joys. The woods of Manomet were
full of butterflies. Splendid specimens of Van-
essa antiopa danced together by twos and threes
in every sunny glade, the gold edging of bright
rai-ment showing beneath their "mourning
cloaks" of rich seal brown. Here in the rich
sunshine Launcelot might well have said :
Myself beheld three spirits, mad with joy,
Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower.
Here Grapta interrogationis carried his ever
present question mark from one dry leaf to an-
other asking always that unanswerable "why?"
Here Pyrameis huntera, well named the hunter's
butterfly, flashed red through the woodland,
Birds of thr PIxmniilh U'onds, Jt'isc and Othenvise
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS 21
scouting silently and becoming invisible in am-
bush as a hunter should. Here a tiny fleck of
sky, the spirit bluebird of the spring which the
entomologists have woefully named Lycasma
pseudargiolus, fluttered along the ground as if a
new born flower tried quivering flight, and brown
Hesperiidse, "bedouins of the pathless air,"
buzzed in vanishing eccentricity. But it was not
for these that I lingered long on the seaward
crest. There below me lay the bay that the ex-
ploring Pilgrims entered at such hazard, that but
the day before had been blotted out with a freez-
ing storm and gray with snow, now smiling in
unforgettable beauty at my feet, bringing irre-
sistibly to mind the one who sang.
My soul today is far away,
Sailing the blue Vesuvian bay.
At Naples indeed could be no softer, fairer
skies than this June day of late April brought
to Plymouth Bay and spread over the waters
that nestled within the curve of that splendid
young moon of white sand that sweeps from
Manomet to the tip of the sandspit, with the Gur-
net far to the right and Plymouth's white houses
rising in the middle distance. It lacked only the
22 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
cone of Vesuvius smoking beyond to make the
memory complete.
Nor has the Bay of Naples bluer waters than
those that danced below me. Some stray cur-
rent of the Gulf Stream must have curled about
the tip of Cape Cod and spread its wonder bloom
over them. Here were the same exquisite soft
blues, shoaling into tender green, that I have seen
among the Florida keys. Surely it was like a
transformation scene. The day before the torn
sea wild with wind and the dun clouds of a north-
east gale hiding the distance with a mystery of
dread, a wind that beat the forest with snow and
chilled to the marrow; and this day the warmth
of an Italian spring and the blue Vesuvian Bay.
The Pilgrims had their seasons of storm and
stress, but there came to them too halcyon days
like this when the mayflower bloomed in all the
woodland about them, the mourning cloak but-
terflies danced with joy down the sunny glades,
and the bay spread its wonderful blue beneath
their feet in the delicious promise of June. Nor
is it any wonder that in spite of hardships and
disaster manifold they yet found heart to write
home that it was a fayere lande and bountiful.
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS 23
But for all the lure of Plymouth woods with
their fragrance of trailing arbutus, from all the
grandeur of the wide outlook from Manomet
Heights, the hearts of all who come to Plymouth
must lead them back to the resting place of the
fathers on the brow of the little hill in 'the midst
of the town. There where the grass was not yet
green and the buttercups that will later shine in
gold have put forth but the tiniest beginnings of
their fuzzy, three-parted leaves, I watched the
sun sink, big and red in a golden mist, over a
land of whose coming material greatness Brad-
ford and his fellow Pilgrims could have had no
inkling. Seaward the tropic bloom of the water
was all gone, and there as the sun passed I saw
the cool steel of the bay catch the last rays in
little dimples of silver light. Manomet with-
drew, blue and mysterious in the haze of night-
fall. Out over the Gurnet, beyond, the sky
caught purples from the colors in the west, and
there, dropping below the horizon line, east
northeast toward England, I saw a sail vanish in
the soft haze as if it might be the first Mayflower,
sailing away from the heavy-hearted Pilgrims,
toward England and home. The sun's last ray
touched it with a fleck of rose as it passed, a rose
24 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
like that Which tipped the petals of the mayflow-
ers that I held in my hand, mayflowers that sent
up to me in the coolness of the gathering April
night a fragrance as aromatic and beloved as is
the memory of the lives of the Pilgrims that
slept all about me on the brow of Burial Hill.
Bradford wrote gravely and simply the chronicles
of these, and no more, yet the fervent faith and
sturdy love for fair play, unquenchable in the
hearts of these men, breathes from every page, a
fragrance that shall go forth on the winds of the
world forevermore.
CHAPTER III
UNBUILDING A BUILDING
I tore down an old house recently, rent it part
from part with my own hands and a crowbar,
piling it in its constituents, bricks with bricks,
timber on timber, boards with boards.
Any of us who dare love the iconoclast would
be one if we dared sufficiently, and in this work
I surely was an image-breaker, for the old house
was more than it seemed. To the careless passer,
it was a gray, bald, doddering old structure that
seemed trying to shrink into the ground, unten-
anted, unsightly, and forlorn. I know, having
analyzed it, that it was an image of New Eng-
land village life of the two centuries just gone,
a life even the images of which are passing, never
to return.
As I knocked the old place down, it seemed
to grow up, more vivid as it passed from the
roadside of the visible to the realm of the remem-
bered. You may think you know a house by
living in it, but you do not ; you need to unbuild
25
26 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
it to get more than a passing acquaintance. And
to unbuild a building you need to be strong of
limb, heavy of hand, and sure of eye, lest the
structure upon which you have fallen fall upon
you; nor do business mottoes count, for you be-
gin not at the bottom, but at the top, or near it.
Up in the attic among the cobwebs, stooping
beneath the ancient rafters, dodging crumbly
bunches of pennyroyal and hyssop, hung there by
hands that have been dust these fifty years, you
poise and swing a forty-pound crowbar with a
strong uplift against the roof-board, near where
one of the old-time hand-made, hammer-pointed,
wrought-iron nails enters the oak timber. The
board lifts an inch and snaps back into place.
You hear a handful of the time-and-weather-
worn shingles jump and go sputtering down the
roof. You hear a stealthy rustling and scurrying
all about you. Numerous tenants who pay no
rent have heard eviction notice, for the house in
which no men live is the abode of many races.
Another blow near another nail, and more
shingles jump and flee, and this time a clammy
hand slaps your face. It is only the wing of a
bat, fluttering in dismay from his crevice. Blow
UNBUILDING A BUILDING 27
after blow you drive upon this board from be-
neath, till all the nails are loose, its shingle-fet-
ters outside snap, and with a surge it rises, to
fall grating down the roof, and land with a crash
on the grass by the old door-stone.
The morning sun shines in at the opening, set-
ting golden motes dancing, and caressing rafters
that have not felt its touch for a hundred and
fifty years, and you feel a little sob of sorrow
swell in your heart, for the old house is dead, be-
yond hope of resurrection. With your crowbar
you have knocked it in the head.
Other boards follow more easily, for now you
may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron
lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak
too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have
the roof unboarded. And here you may have a
surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness
which you will need if you would survive your
unbuilding. The bare rafters, solid oak, six
inches square, hewn from the tree, as adze-marks
prove, are halved together at the top and pinned
with an oak pin. At the lower end, where they
stand upon the plates, they are not fastened, but
rest simply on a V-shaped cut, and when the last
28 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
board is off they tumble over like a row of nine-
pins and you may be bowled out with them if you
are not clever enough to foresee this.
As with the roof-boards, so with the floors and
walls. Blows with the great bar, or its patient
use as a lever, separate part from part, board
from joist, and joist from timber, and do the
work, and you learn much of the wisdom and
foolishness of the old-time builder as you go on.
Here he dovetailed and pinned the framework so
firmly and cleverly that nothing but human pa-
tience and ingenuity could ever get it apart;
there he cut under the ends of splendid strong
floor joists and dropped them into shallow mor-
tises, so that but an inch or two of the wood
really took the strain, and the joist seemed likely
to split and drop out, of its own weight. You
see the work of the man who knew his business
and used only necessary nails, and those in the
right places; and the work of that other, who
was five times as good a carpenter because he
used five times as many nails !
You learn, too, how the old house grew from
a very humble beginning to an eleven-room
structure that covered a surprising amount of
ground, as one generation after another passed
. UNBUILDING A BUILDING 29
and one owner succeeded another. In this the
counsel of the local historian helps you much, for
he comes daily and sits by as you work, and
daily tells you the story of the old place, usually
beginning in the middle and working both ways ;
for the unbuilding of a building is a great pro-
moter of sociability. Fellow townsmen whom
you feel that you hardly know beyond a rather
stiff bowing acquaintance hold up their horses
and hail you jovially, even getting out to chat a
while or lend a hand, each having opinions ac-
cording to his lights. Strickland, whose pros-
perity lies in swine, sees but one use for the old
timbers. "My!" he says, 'Svhat a hog-pen this
would make !" Downes is divided in his mind be-
tween hen-houses and green-houses, and thinks
there will be enough lumber and sashes for both.
Lynde suspects that you are going to establish
gypsy camps wholesale, while Estey, carpenter
and builder, and wise in the working of wood,
knows that you are lucky if the remains are good
enough for fire-wood.
Little for these material aspects cares the his-
torian, however, as he skips gayly from one past
generation to another, waving his phantoms off
the stage of memory with a sweep of his cane,
30 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
and poking others on to make their bow to the
man with the crowbar, who thus, piecing the
narrative out with his own detective work in
wood, rebuilds the story. It was but a little
house which began with two rooms on the ground
floor and two attic chambers, built for Stoddard
who married the daughter of the pioneer land-
owner of the vicinity, and it nestled up within a
stone's throw of the big house, sharing its pros-
perity and its history. No doubt the Stoddards
were present at the funeral in the big house, when
stern old Parson Dunbar stood above the de-
ceased, in the presence of the assembled relatives,
and said with Puritanical severity, "My friends,
there lies the body, but the soul is in hell!"
The dead man had failed to attend the par-
son's sermons at the old First Congregational
Church, near by, a church that with successive
pastors has slipped from the Orthodoxy of Par-
son Dunbar to the most modern type of present-
day Unitarianism.
A later dweller in the old house lives in local
tradition as publishing on the bulletin board in
the church vestibule his intention of marriage
with a fair lady of the parish, as was the cus-
tom of the day. Another fair lady entering the
UNBUILDING A BUILDING 31
church on Sunday morning pointed dramatically
at the notice, saying to the sexton, "Take that
notice down, and don't you dare to put it up
again till I give the word."
The sexton, seeming to know who was in
charge of things, took it down and it was not
again posted for two years. The marriage then
took place. A few years later the wife died, and
after a brief period of mourning another notice
was posted announcing the marriage of the
widower and the lady who had forbidden the
banns of his first marriage. The second mar-
riage took place without interference, and they
lived happily ever after, leaving posterity in
doubt whether the incident in the church vesti-
bule was the climax in a battle royal between the
two ladies for the hand of the man who dwelt in
the old house, or whether the man himself had
loved not wisely iDUt too many.
Another dweller in the old house was a locally
celebrated singer who for years led the choir and
the music in the old church, having one son whom
a wealthy Bostonian educated abroad, "becom-
ing," said the historian sagely, "a great tenor
singer, but very little of a man." These were
days of growing importance for the old house.
32 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Two new rooms were added to the ground-floor-
back by the simple expedient of tacking long
spruce rafters to the roof, making a second roof
over the old one, leaving the old roof with boards
and shingles still on it. Thus there grew a roof
above a roof, — a shapeless void of a dark attic,
— and below, the two rooms.
The use of the spruce rafters and hemlock
boarding marks a period in building little more
than a half-century gone. About this time the
house acquired a joint owner, for a local lawyer
of considerable importance joined his fortunes
and his house to it, bringing both with him.
This section, two more rooms and an attic, was
moved in from another part of the town and at-
tached very gingerly, by one corner, to one cor-
ner. It was as if the lawyer had had doubts as
to how the two houses might like each other, and
had arranged things so that the bond might be
broken with as small a fracture as possible. This
"new" part may well have been a hundred years
old at the time, for, whereas the original house
was boarded with oak on oak, this was boarded
with splendid clear pine on oak, marking the
transition from the pioneer days when all the tim-
ber for a house was obtained from the neighbor-
UNBUILDING A BUILDING 33
ing wood, through the time when the splendid
pumpkin pines of the Maine forests were the
commonest and cheapest sources of lumber, to
our own, when even poor spruce and shaky hem-
lock are scarce and costly. In the same way you
note in these three stages of building three types
of nails. First is the crude nail hammered out
by the local blacksmith, varying in size and shape,
but always with a head formed by splitting the
nail at the top and tending the parts to the right
and left. These parts are sometimes quite long,
and clinch back into the board like the top of a
capital T. Then came a better nail of wrought
iron, culmsy but effective; and, later still, the
cut nail in sole use a generation ago. That mod-
ern abomination, the wire nail, appears only in
repairs.
Thus the old house rose from four rooms to
eight, with several attics, and the singer and
lawyers pass off the scene, to be followed by the
Baptist deacon who later seceded and became a
Millerite, holding meetings of great fervor in the
front room, where one wall used to be covered
with figures which proved beyond a doubt that
the end of the world was at hand, and where
later he and his fellow believers appeared in their
34 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
ascension robes. He too added a wing to the old
house, three rooms and another attic, and when I
had laid bare the timbers of this the historian
rose, holding both hands and his cane towards
heaven, and orated fluently.
'There!" he said, "that's Wheeler! I knew it
was, for the old deeds couldn't be read in any
other way. They told me it was built on by the
Millerite, but I knew better. This was moved
up from the Wheeler farm, and it was a hundred
years old and more when it came up, sixty years
ago. I knew it. Look at those old cap-posts!"
I doged the cane as it waved, and took another
look, for it was worth while. There were the
corner posts, only seven feet high, but ten inches
square at the bottom, solid oak, swelling to four-
teen inches at the top, with double tenants on
which sat the great square oak-plates, dovetailed
and pinned together, and pinned again to the cap.
A hundred and fifty years old and more was this
addition, which the Millerite had moved up from
the Wheeler farm and built on for his boot-shop ;
yet these great oak cap-posts marked a period
far more remote. They were second-hand when
they went into the Wheeler building, for there
were in them the marks of mortising that had no
UNBUILDING A BUILDING 35
reference to the present structure. Some build-
ing, old a century and a half ago, had been torn
down and its timbers used for the part that "had
been Wheeler."
Thus the old house grew again as it fell, and
the old-time owners and inhabitants stepped
forth into life once more. Yet I found traces
of other tenants that paid neither rent nor taxes,
yet occupied apartments that to them were com-
modious and comfortable. In the attic were the
bats, but not they alone. Snuggled up against
the chimney in the southern angle, right under
the ridge-pole, was a whole colony of squash-
bugs which had wintered safely there and were
only waiting for the farmer's squash vines to be-
come properly succulent. A bluebottle fly slipped
out of a crevice and buzzed in the sun by the attic
window. Under every ridge-board and corner-
board, almost under every shingle, were the co-
coons and chrysalids of insects, thousands of si-
lent lives waiting but the touch of the summer
sun to make them vocal.
On the ground floor, within walls, were the
apartments of the rats, their empty larders
choked with corn-cobs showing where once had
been feasting, their bed chambers curiously up-
36 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
bolstered with rags laboriously dragged in to
senseless confusion. The field mice had the floor
above. Here and there on the plates, between
joists, and over every window and door, were
their nests, carefully made of wool, chewed from
old garments and made fine, soft, and cosy.
Their larders were full of cherry-stones, literally
bushels on bushels of them, each with a little
round hole gnawed in it and the kernel extracted.
As the toil of the human inhabitants year after
year had left its mark on the floors of the house,
worn thin everywhere, in places worn through
with the passing and repassing of busy feet, so
had the generations of field mice left behind them
mute witnesses of patient, enormous labor.
From the two cherry trees in the neighboring
yard how many miles had these shy little people
traveled, unseen of men, with one cherry at a
time, to lay in this enormous supply !
Within the chimneys were the wooden nests of
chimney swifts, glued firmly to the bricks ; under
the cornice was the paper home of a community
of yellow hornets ; and under the floor where was
no cellar, right next the base of the warm chim-
ney, were apartments that had been occupied by
generations of skunks. Each space between floor
UNBUILDING A BUILDING 37
joists and timber was a room. In one was a
huge clean nest of dried grass, much like that
which red squirrels build of cedar bark. An-
other space had been the larder, for it was full
of dry bones and feathers ; others were for other
uses, all showing plainly the careful housekeep-
ing of the family in the basement.
I looked long and carefully, as the work of de-
struction went on, for the pot of gold beneath the
floor, or the secret hoard which fancy assigns to
all old houses ; but not even a stray penny turned
up. Yet I got several souvenirs. One of these
is a nail in my foot whereby I shall remember
my iconoclasm for some time. Another is a cu-
riously wrought wooden scoop, a sort of butter-
worker, the historian tells me, carved, seemingly,
with a jackknif e from a pine plank. A third is a
quaint, lumbering, heavy, hand-wrought fire-
shovel which appeared somewhat curiously. Re-
entering a room which I had cleared of every-
thing movable, I found it standing against the
door-jamb. Fire-shovels have no legs, so I sup-
pose it was brought in. However, none of the
neighbors has confessed, and I am content to
think it belonged in the old house and was
brought back, perhaps by the Baptist deacon who
38 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
**backslided" and became a Millerite. It has
been rusted by water and burned by fire, and I
don't believe even Sherlock Holmes could make
a wiser deduction.
As I write, a section of one of the old
"Wheeler" cap-posts is crumbling to ashes in my
fireplace. It was of solid oak, of a texture as
firm and grainless almost as soapstone. No
water had touched this wood, I know, for a hun-
dred and fifty years, perhaps for almost a hundred
added to that. For hours it retained its shape,
glowing like a huge block of anthracite, and send-
ing forth a heat as great but infinitely more
kindly and comforting. Toward the last the
flames which came from it lost their yellow
opaqueness and slipped fluttering upward in a
transparent opalescence which I never before saw
in fire. It was as if the soul of the old house,
made out of all that was beautiful and kindly in
the hopes and longings of those who built it and
lived in it, stood revealed a monument in its
shining beauty before it passed on.
CHAPTER IV
forefathers' day
One does not need to seek the brow of Cole's
Hill very early on Forefathers' Day to see the
star of morning rise and shine upon Plymouth.
It marks the passing of one of the four longest
nights of the year, those of the four days before
Christmas, a memorable period for all Ameri-
cans, for during it the Pilgrim Fathers came to
Plymouth. According to the best authorities the
exploring party set foot on the famous rock on
Monday, Dec. 21 (new style). But the ship her-
self did not enter the harbor for five days. Fri-
day, the 1 8th, the explorers reached Clark's
Island after dark and spent the night most mis-
erably, though it was next door to a miracle that
they got there alive and no doubt they were
thankful for that. How they battled by Mano-
met Point in the half gale and high sea, the night
already upon them and the harbor unknown to
any aboard, their rudder gone and their mast
"broken in three places," we know from Brad-
39
40 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
ford's graphic description. On Saturday they
rested on their island and dried their clothes and
their gunpowder. On Sunday they prayed and
otherwise kept the Sabbath as was their want.
On Monday they went ashore on the mainland,
found the situation desirable, and struck boldly
across the bay to the Mayflower inside the hook
of the Cape, to tell the news.
So the first of the Forefathers set foot on Ply-
mouth soil on the 2ist of December, according
to the revised calendar. But the Mayflower her-
self did not enter the harbor till five days later.
"On the 15th of December," says Bradford
(on the 25th as we now reckon it, though ten
days before the England they had left behind
would celebrate Christmas), ''they weighed an-
chor to go to the place they had discovered, and
came within two leagues of it, but were fain to
bear up again, but the i6th day the wind became
fair and they arrived safely in the harbor and
afterward took a better view of the place and re-
solved where to pitch their dwellings and the
25th day began to erect the first house for com-
mon use, to receive them and their goods.
Forefathers' Day is rightly set, then, on the
FOREFATHERS' DAY 41
2 1 St, though we 'have really an all-winter land-
ing of the Pilgrims, the ship remaining in the
harbor and being more or less their refuge until
the 5th of April, 1621. In some respects the
place of their landing has vastly changed. The
waterfront is ugly with rough wharves and coal
pockets, store-houses and factories. The famous
rock itself reposes beneath a monstrous granite
canopy and seems to have so little connection with
the sea that one at first sight is inclined to levity,
wondering where the landing party got the gang
plank which bridged such a distance. Yet it was
in all reverence that I sought Plymouth, hoping
to in some measure bridge the three centuries
that lie between that day and this, and see the
New World in some measure as they saw it, at
the same season.
For at least the seasons have not changed.
The storms and the calms, the snow and the sun-
shine, come now, as then, in cycles that may not
match day by day in all instances, but, taking
year by year, come surprisingly near it. There
is more in the Old Farmer's Almanack's serene
forecast of the weather for an entire year ahead
than most of us are willing to admit. There are
people who back its oracle against the Weather
42 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Bureau and claim that they travel warmer and
drier by so doing. Yet if one makes a study of
Farmers' Almanack weather he finds that it wins
by predicting the same storms and the same cold
snaps, the same drought and the same rain for
just about the same seasons, year after year,
spreading the prophecy over days enough to give
it considerable leeway. "About this time expect
a storm," it says, and in the ten days of the
aforesaid time the storm is pretty apt to come.
So, to my joy, I found in Plymouth on my few
days there on Forefathers' Day week just about
the weather Bradford reports for that first voy-
age of the Mayflower's shallop to its harbor.
"After some hour's sailing," says Bradford, "it
began to snow and rain, and about the middle of
the afternoon the wind increased and the sea be-
came very rough and they broke their rudder and
it was as much as two men could do to steer her
with a couple of oars. But their pilot bade them
be of good cheer as he saw the harbor, but the
storm increased and night coming on they bore
what sail they could to get in while they could see.
But herewith they broke their mast in three pieces
and their sail fell overboard in a very grown sea,
so that they were like to have been cast away."
FOREFATHERS' DAY 43
Anyone who knows that Massachusetts coast in
December will recognize the weather, a wind
from the northeast bringing mingled rain and
snow, not a gale, but -a squally wind, with a "very
grown sea" such as beat upon the coast at the
beginning of this week, sending the white horses
racing up the beach below Manomet Head, which
has been named for them, and smashing in con-
tinuous thunder on the stern and rockbound cliffs
between White Horse Beach and Plymouth har-
bor.
To see Manomet in stormy December is to
know how grim it is. The wooded headland
which the little shallop so desperately won by in
the gloom of that December twilight and storm
has changed little if any since that time. Stern
and rock-bound it certainly is. The sea of cen-
turies has beaten against the great drumlins of
boulder-till and has not moved the boulders that
bind them together. At the most it has but
washed out the smaller ones, leaving the sea front
surfaced with great white granite rocks that
gleam like marble in the sundown to the limits of
the washing tide, then shine olive green with the
froth of the waves. From the sands of White
Horse Beach to those of the Spit in Plymouth
44 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
harbor there is no place where that storm-tossed
shallop might have made a landing with any hope-
of safety. To have turned toward the shore as
the pilot bade them when the mast broke would
have been to drown the whole company in the
surf, in which case Plymouth would never have
been. No one knows the name of the "lustie
seaman" who then usurped the command and
bade the rowers "if they were men, about with
her, or else they were all cast away." On the
words of this courageous unknown hung the lives
of the company and perhaps the fate of the ex-
pedition itself. It is a stern and rock-bound
coast in very truth, and if it seemed as dark and
forbidding on that December nightfall in 1620 as
it did on one of the same date this year, I for
one would not have blamed them had they sailed
away, never to come back. For a quarter of a
mile off shore scattered boulders curried the surf
and fluffed it into white foam. Its deafening
roar was filled with menace. Salt spray and sleet
minsfled cut one's face rods back from the shore,
and high up the dark hill behind rose the gnarled
woodland, wailing and tossing its giant branches.
With the fall of night no light was visible from
sea or shore. All was as primal, as chaotic, as
CI,
'^
^
^
FOREFATHERS' DAY 45
menacing as it had been on that Friday night
three centuries before when the Pilgrims' shallop
beat in by the point, its tiny white sail drowned
like the wing of a seagull in the dusky welter of
the sea.
That night, as on the night that the Pilgrims
came, the wind changed to the westward and
blew the storm to sea. Yet all night from Cole's
Hill I saw the dark clouds to seaward, lingering
there and refusing to be driven completely away,
and in the gray of dawn the morning star rose
out of them, overmatching with its clear light that
of the Gurnet which shone from the murk of
their depths below. The frozen ground rang
beneath the heel and the cold had bitten deep.
Out of the northwest a few flakes of snow came
and it was long before the sun shone through the
clouds and touched the top of Manomet Hill.
Yet when it did it came with a burst of golden
glory and filled the sky with such rosy and be-
nign colors that one half expected to see a flight
of Raphael's cherubs through it to earth. And
all the land beneath was softened with a blue haze
from east to south, making of it a country of ro-
mance through which pricked towers of Aladdin
46 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
palaces and in which one knew at sight that he
might find all his dearest dreams coming true.
Thus the Pilgrims saw it that first morning from
Clark's Island and the sight must have warmed
the hearts of them and dried the tears out as it
dried the garments wet with salt spray and cold
rain.
The wind from the west was keen for the next
few days, but it blew all the forebodings out of
the sky and to find the south side of a hill or even
a thicket was to find perfect comfort. The sea
off Manomet was no longer chaotic and menacing,
but was stippled with dancing light on a soft,
rich blue that was as soothing to the sense as the
other had been disquieting. Along the south of
White Horse Beach the lapidary surf had strewn
quartz pebbles that gleamed in the clear sun like
precious stones. It took little effort of the imag-
ination to find pocketfuls of rubies, pearls, sap-
phires, and amethysts among these, and had it
indeed been "bright jewels of the mine" which
the voyagers sought they might have been par-
doned for thinking they had found them there.
And all ashore under this alluring blue haze lay a
country that was superlatively lovely even under
frozen skies and on the shortest day of the year.
FOREFATHERS' DAY 47
Southerly toward it the shallop sailed in 1620,
under flocks of whirling white gulls, through
flocks of black and white Labrador ducks that
then wintered in numbers along our shores, from
Clark's Island to the mouth of Town Brook.
Factories and dwellings line Town Brook, now
in place of the primeval forests of pine and oak.
Its waters leap one dam after another, but can-
not escape pollution till their dark tide mingles
with that of the clear sea. But for all that the
contour of the chasms in the big sand hills
through which it flows to the sea is changed but
little. The low sun leaves it in shadow most of
the day and one can fancy the Pilgrim children
and perhaps their elders glancing often up its
shadowy caiion under black growth, a mysterious
gulch down which at any time might stride the
savages they so feared, or other, worse terrors of
the unknown wilderness. The little knowledge
of their day was but a tiny oasis in the vast desert
of unknown things, and in that country to the
south and west that was so alluring under the
golden glow of the sun through its soft blue haze
might dwell both gorgons and chimeras dire.
For though the children were not with the ex-
plorers when they landed from the shallop on
48 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Forefathers' Day, they came five days later in
the Mayflower itself.
There were twenty-eight of these children,
varying in age from the babe in arms to well-
grown, lusty youths and maidens. Christmas
was at hand, and one fancies that all knew much
about it, and spoke little, perhaps not at all. So
far as record goes they had broken absolutely
from all that they believed the follies of the
fatherland. Yet in the hearts of many, one can
but think, must have remained warm memories
of Yule logs, of the boar's head, piping hot and
decked out with holly berries, and of the low-
ceiled, oak-wainscotted dining halls of Old World
houses all alight with candles and green with
Christmas decorations. It is a pity that in re-
pudiating the folly they had to repudiate also the
fun. For just ashore in this land of mystery to
which they had come were opportunities for
Christmas greenery and Christmas feasting
which they would have done well to take. The
English holly they had left behind, yet along
Town Brook grew the black alder with its red
berries that are so pretty a substitute for the oth-
ers, a holly itself, or at least an Ilex. All about
Plymouth in the low grounds may be found these
FOREFATHERS' DAY 49
cheery, bright red berries, even over on the sea-
ward slope of Manomet Head I found them,
snuggHng in hollows where tiny rivulets trickle
down to the sea, though on the ridge above them
the oaks were dwarfed and storm-beaten till one
has difficulty in recognizing them for the variety
of tree that they are.
It is easy to believe that down to the very rock
on which they landed crept the club-moss which
the descendants of the Pilgrims so soon learned
to call ''evergreen." Tons of it we use today in
our Christmas decorations, nor does the supply
from the Massachusetts woods seem to diminish,
ground-pine, common, and "coral" evergreen, all
varieties of the club-moss, that are commonest
out of the dozen that we have in all. Just up
those dark gullies Town Brook would have led
them, as it will lead anyone today, to a country
that now, as it was then, is rich in winter beauties
of the woodland with which the exiles might well
have decorated the cabin of the Mayflower.
And just within the woods in any direction
waited for them, had they had the will and the
wisdom to seek them, all kinds of Christmas
cheer. Deer were there, wild turkeys in great
flocks and two varieties of grouse as tame as
50 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
chickens on a farm, and more delicious than any
Christmas goose which might have been served
them in Holland or England. There were no
savages about Plymouth at the time and they
might have travelled the woods boldly, instead
of taking prudent council of their fears. But
they need not have gone so far as that for their
Christmas feast. The sandy flats of nearby
creeks were full of clams and the sea of fish.
The boar's head they might not have, but there
were splendid substitutes for it if they had cared
to make their Christmas feast of products of the
new land to which they had come.
Against all this, no doubt, they sternly set
their faces, and indeed, instead of feasting and
good cheer on their December 25th, they set
soberly to work to build their first common house,
cutting greenery indeed, but not for decoration,
and dining abstemiously on the stores that they
had shipped months before in England. One can
but believe that had they for a few bright holi-
days put their fears behind them with their
solemnity and celebrated their own safe landing
with a few roasted turkeys, a few boiled cod and
some clam soup, eaten in an evergreen-decorated
cabin of their good ship, or about a barbecue
FOREFATHERS' DAY 51
fire on shore, they might have taken a step
toward warding off the sickness which was even
then fastening itself upon them. But they cer-
tainly did not, and in visiting their landing-place
on their landing-day and trying to see the world
here as they then saw it, one must put such riot-
ous thoughts out of mind, as he must put the
great present-day town out of it.
Those two things aside on any before-Christ-
mas week it is possible to see the landing-place of
the Pilgrims much as they saw it, to feel the same
stormy weather sweep across the same sea and
to see landward the same hills clad with dark
forests tossing their giant branches and seeming
to hold much of mystery and dread. To know
just a little of what they saw and felt one need
but to stand on the brow of Manomet Head when
a December night lowers and the northeast wind
is hurling the surf on the rocks out of "a very
grown sea."
CHAPTER V
THE SINGING PINES
The pines were asleep in the noonday heat
That shimmered down the lea,
But they waked with the roar of a wave-swept shore
When the wind came in from the sea.
They sang of ships, and the bosun piped.
The hoarse watch roared a tune,
The taut sheets whined in the twanging wind,
You heard the breakers croon.
For their brothers, masts on a thousand keels,
Had sent a greeting free.
And the answering song swelled clear and strong
When the wind came in from the sea.
Last night I heard the pines sing- again. A
winter midnight was on the woods, while a north-
easter smote the coast, a dozen miles away, with
the million sledges of the surf. So mighty was
the story of this smiting, that for long I thought
the pines sang of nothing else. In places and at
times they told it with astonishing fidelity. A
forty-mile gale muttered and grumbled to itself
52
THE SINGING PINES 53
high in air above. Its voice was that of the gale
anywhere when unobstructed. You may hear it
at sea or ashore, a hubbub of tones indistinguish-
able as gust shoulders against gust and grumbles
about it. In the quiet at the bottom of the wood
I could hear this, too, especially at times when
the wind lifted above the pine tops, leaving them
in hushed expectancy of the story to come, a tell-
ing oratorical pause. For a little the voice of
the gale itself would come burbling down into the
momentary stillness, then with a gasp at the awe-
someness of the tale the pines would take up the
story again. In it there was none of the dainty
romance the boughs will weave for the listener
who cares to know their language of a sunny
summer afternoon, little stories of tropic seas, of
nodding sails and of flying fish that spring from
the foam beneath the forefoot and skim the
purple waves. This song was an epic of the age-
long battle between the sea and the shore, a song
without words, but told so well in tone that it
was easy, seeing nothing there in the black
shadow of the wood, yet to see it all; the jagged
horizon against the sullen sky, the streaks of
mottled foam sliding landward along the welter-
ing backs of black waves, spinning into sea drift
54 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
at every wind-sheared crest, and blowing, soft
as wool, in rolling masses far inland. It was
easy to see the greatest crests rear and draw
back, showing the roots of the ledges among
boulders brown with weed and sea wrack, then
swing forward with seemingly irresistible might,
to be shattered as if their crystal was that of
glass and to fly skyward a hundred feet, scintil-
lant white star drift of comminuted sea. The
crash of such waves on such rocks, the hollow
diapason of their like on sands, and the shrill
roar of a pebbly beach torn and tossed by the
waves, all sprang from nothingness into vibrant
being there in the black woods as the gale
shouldered by the pine tops.
There is a point where the pines group on the
pond shore and look expectantly east, wistful of
the sea. Here they caught the full force of the
gale and sang mightily, a wild, deep-toned,
marching symphony of crashing forces. Now
and then a lull came, as comes in the fiercest
gales, and in the vast silence which ensued I
heard the pines across the pond singing antiphon-
ally. Black as it was under the trees, there was
a moon behind the night. No suggestion of it
showed through the clouds, yet from the pond
THE SINGING PINES 55
surface itself came a weird twilight, filtered no
doubt through a mile of flying scud a mile above,
reflected from the wind-swept surface and show-
ing these distant pines lifting heads of murk
against the murky sky. But their antiphonal
shout was no pine-voiced song of the sea, it was
the sea itself. Again and again I listened in
successive lulls. I could not believe it the pines.
I heard so surely the rush of waves, the deep
boom of beating surges, all the mingled clangor
of the on-shore gale, that I thought through some
atmospheric trick I was listening to the thing
itself; the uproar swept over the hills a dozen
miles inland. Only by marching up the pond
shore until the pines across were south instead
of east of me did I prove to myself that it was
they and not the sea in very truth that I heard.
Back again in the Stygian darkness of the
grove it was easy to note how the pines protect
their own. On the beach the smothering onrush
of the gale beat me down, drove me before it.
Yet I had but to walk inland a dozen yards to
find a calm. The outermost trees shunted the
gale and half the time it did not touch even the
tops of those a hundred feet in. Walking out
into the midnight storm, I had wondered how it
56 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
fared with the small folk of the forest. So fierce
was the onslaught of the wind that it seemed as
if the birds might be blown from their roosts, the
squirrels shaken from their nests. Under the
shelter of the trees themselves I knew they were
as safe as I from any harm from the wind.
There was not enough of it below the tree-tops
to ruffle a feather.
To lay one's ear closely and firmly against the
trunk of one of these pines was to curiously get
an inkling of what was going on far up among
the branches. It is quite like listening at a tele-
phone receiver, the wood like the wire bringing
to the ear sound of many things going on within
touch of it. Thus placed, I was conscious that
the seemingly immobile tree swayed rhythmic-
ally, just the very slightest swaying in the world,
and this I seemed to hear. It was as if the slight
readjustment of the woody fibre gave me a faint
thrumming sound, a tiny music of motion that
was a delight to the ear after the beat and bellow
of the gale beyond.
Twigs rapped one upon another, making little
crisp sounds. Most surprising of all, however,
was a tinkling tattoo of musical notes as if a
dryad within were tapping out woodland mel-
THE SINGING PINES 57
odies on a xylophone. I listened long to this.
It was not exactly a comfortable position. To
hear I must press, and the tree bark was hard
and the rain ran down the trunk and into my ear.
Yet the music was exquisite, a little runic rhyme,
repeated over and over again with quaint varia-
tions but with neither beginning nor end. It was
wonderfully wild and fairylike. Who would
stop for water in his ear or a pain in the lobe
of it? Midnight, the middle of the gale, the mid-
dle of the woods; perhaps here was that very
opening into the realm of the unseen woodland
folk that we all in our inmost hearts hope for
and expect some day to find.
So did he feel who pulled the boughs aside,
That we might look into the forest wide.
Telling us how fair trembling Syrinx fled
Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread.
Poor nymph — poor Pan — how he did weep to find
Naught but a lovely sighing of the wind
Along the reedy stream; a half heard strain,
Full of sweet desolation, balmy pain.
It may have been the dryad, playing the xylo-
phone for a dance unseen by my gross mortal
eyes, but if my water-logged ear did not deceive
58 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
me — and I hope it did — it was only the beat of
the big drops of rain on the twigs above, clarified
and made resonant by its passage through the
vibrant wood to my ear. At any rate, it was a
most delightful musical entertainment of which I
fancy myself the discoverer, and I hope it was the
dryad. He who reads may believe as he will.
Beyond the pines I found the wind in the
woods. Among the bare limbs of the deciduous
growth the storm wailed and clattered its way
on a'bout my head as I felt out the path with my
feet for a half mile to a pine-crowned hilltop.
Again I was in sanctuary. The hilltop car-
ried us up — the pines and me — into the full
sweep of the gale, yet under their spreading,
beneficent arms I felt no breath of wind. Over-
head I noted its own wild voice as, very near
and right with it in chorus, the pines sang, sway-
ing in time to their" music as I have seen a rapt
singer do. Strangely enough, in their tones up
here I could hear no cry of the sea. They sang
instead the tumult of the sky, the vast lonliness
of distant spaces, something of the deep-toned
threnody of the ancient universe, mourning for
worlds now dark.
Something of this the gale drew from the pines
THE SINGING PINES 59
as it crowded by, but never once did its fiercest
gusts disturb the serenity of the sanctuary be-
neath. A foot or two down from their topmost
boughs was shelter for the crows, snugged down
on a lee limb, close to the trunk, their feathers
set to shed such rain as might strike them, their
long black beaks thrust beneath their wings,
rocked in the cradle of the deep woods, sung to
sleep by their lullaby of the primal universe.
There was little need to waste sympathy on them
or on any other little folk of the forest who had
for their shelter the brooding arms of these bene-
ficent trees stretched above them.
Pines are the great, deep-breasted mothers of
the woods, giving food and shelter from sun and
storm to all who will come to them. Prolific
mothers they are, too, and if man with his axe
and his fire would but spare them they would
in a generation or two reclothe our Massachu-
setts waste lands with their kind once more.
Recklessly as the generations have destroyed
them, sweeping often great tracts bare of every
noble trunk, leaving the slash piled high for the
fire to complete the destruction of the axe, they
still persist, pushing the greenwood with its fluffy
plumes right to our dooryards. Let the ploughed
6o OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
field lie fallow for a decade and see them come,
loyal little folk preparing the way for them, as
the trolls of ancient tales worked for those they
loved. Into the brown furrows troop the
goldenrod and asters, the wild grasses and
brambles making a first shelter for the seeds of
gray birch and wild cherry that magically come
and plant themselves. A thousand other forms
of life, beast and bird and insect, make the place
their home, all preparing it for the nursing, of the
young pines to come. However rough has been
the work of the wood cutters, however persistent
the forest fires, somewhere is a seed pine stand-
ing, ready to spear the turf a mile away with
brown javelins out of whose wounds shall spring
trees, just as out of the Cadmus-sown dragon's
teeth of old sprang armed men. The tree may be
a century-old gnarled trunk, too crooked and
knotty tD be worthy the woodman's axe, or a ver-
dant sprout of a score of years' standing, green
and lusty — the result will be the same. When
the seeding year comes the brown cones will open
and the winds will bear the germs of the new
growth forth, spinning down the gale, whichever
way they list to blow. The tiny pines that result
may live far three or four years amongst the
THE SINGING PINES 6i
brambles unnoticed, then suddenly they take
heart and grow and we find a lusty forest com-
ing along. At three years they will not be over
ten inches high, but they will make ten inches in
height the next year, and after the fifth they
stride forward like lusty youths, glorifying in
their increase. It is not uncommon for them to
stretch up three feet a year, more than doubling
their height in that sixth year in which they
strike their stride. They do not cease this up-
ward striving as long as they live.
After the age of sixty or so the pine may be
said to have passed the heyday of its youth, no
longer increasing so rapidly in height and girth,
yet the increase goes on, if more sedately. The
tree rarely reaches a height of more than i6o
feet and -a diameter of more than forty inches.
The largest ever measured by the Forestry De-
partment of the United States was forty-eight
inches in diameter at breast high and 170 feet
in height, containing 738 cubic feet orf wood in its
mighty trunk. It will be some time before seed-
lings in the bramble patch here in Massachusetts
reach that size, however, for this tree was 460
years old. It grew among trees of similar age
in a pine forest in Michigan.
62 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Yet New England pines have matched it, and
more. Writing in 1846, Emerson tells of trees
here 250 feet in height and six feet in diameter.
One in Lancaster, New Hampshire, measured
264 feet. Fifty years before that trees in Bland-
ford measured when they were felled 223 feet in
length. The upper waters of the Penobscot were
long the home of mighty pine trees where it was
no uncommon thing to hew masts 70 to 90 feet
in length. In 1841 one was hewed there 90 feet
in length, 36 inches in diameter at the butt and
28 inches at the top. Such trees have passed,
now, almost from- the memory of living man.
Could we have them here in our State they would
be worshipped as were the druidical trees of
ancient European 'countries and the place of their
standing v^ould be made a park that they might
be visited by all, rich or poor. It seems a pity
that our ancestors could not have thought of this.
It would have been so easy for them to let clumps
of these wonderful old pines stand, here and
there. It is so impossible for us to bring one of
them back, with all our wealth and all our learn-
ing.
If we may believe the geologists the pines were
the original tree inhabitants of our land, massing
THE SINGING PINES 63
it in their dark green from mountain top to sea
^hore. Suddenly no one knows whence, the oaks
and other deciduous trees appeared among them
and in part drove them out of the richer soils.
"The oak," says Gray, ''has driven the pine to
the sands." Yet the pines grow equally well
among the rough rocks of mountain slopes where
the winter gales that wreck the hardwood trees
leave them untouched. This is the more strange
as pines rarely root deeply. The roots, even of
old trees seventy to one hundred feet in height,
rarely go into the earth more than two or three
feet, taper rapidly and extend not usually over
twenty feet on every side. In young trees
twenty or twenty-five feet tall the roots do not
penetrate more than fifteen or eighteen inches,
yet great old trees stand alone in pasture and on
hilltop, exposed to all the fury of the fiercest
gales, rarely if ever blown down. The structure
of yielding limbs that swing so that the gusts
glance on their plumes, and the needle-like leaves
that let the torrents of air slip through them, is
no doubt the reason for this. The outermost
pines of the grove shoulder the gale away from
the others, yet let it slip by themselves, giving it
no grip whereby to tear them up. The resinous
64 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
roots of the tree not only suffice to hold it up-
right against the storm, but they last long after
the trunk has been cut away. Our forefathers
in clear land used to set the uprooted stumps of
the pine up in rows for fencing, unsightly barri-
cades that would persist for a century with little
sign of decay. On the other hand, wood from
the trunk set in the ground soon decays.
Of the great trees centuries old that once
clothed our land from Newfoundland to the Da-
kotas, from northern New Brunswick to south-
ern Pennsylvania, few if any remain. Nor shall
anyone see their like here again for centuries.
But the pines are coming back again to New Eng-
land. We know their values now as never be-
fore and we are encouraging them to reclothe our
solitudes both for their commercial and their
sentimental value. This last is great and grows
greater, nor need one necessarily go into the
storm at midnight to appreciate it. One may
get some phases of it there, though, that are not
to be found elsewhere. My way home through
the storm was rough and wet, but it was not
lonely. The songs of the pines went with me,
especially the tinkling xylophone dance music of
the dryad, deep within the ancient trunk.
CHAPTER VI
NANTUCKET IN APRIL
It is fabled that nine hundred years ago the
Norsemen riding the white horses of the shoals,
dismounted upon Nantucket, its original Euro-
pean discoverers. But this is hardly to be be-
lieved, for they did not stay there. Conditions
the world over have changed much since the day
of the Vikings, but still today he who comes to
Nantucket must emulate them, and ride the same
white horses of the shoals, for they surround the
island and prance for the modern steamer as they
did for the long Norse ships with the weird
figure-heads and the bulwarks of shields. Blown
down from New Bedford by a rough nor'wester
we plunged through the green rollers south of
Hedge Fence shoals, wallowed among the white
surges of Cross Rip, and found level water only
between the black jetties of Nantucket harbor,
where in the roar of bursting waves the white
spindrift fluffed and drifted across like dry snow
on a January day.
65
66 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Within lies the old town, more sedately and
unconsciously its very self in April than at any"
other time of year. The scalloping is done, pro-
hibited by law after the first and the dredges no
longer vex the sandy shallows of the land-locked
harbor behind gray Coatue. The summer
visitor has not yet come and the town is its very,
peaceful, indeed slumbrous self. The bustle of
the day comes with the arrival of the steamer at
four o'clock. From then until darkness falls
Main street is busy. The curfew, falling in
sweet tones from the old watch tower, voiced by
the silver-tongued "Lisbon bell," lulls all to sleep,
and indeed long before that only an occasional
footfall resounds from the flagging. At seven
the same bell rouses all to the morning's leisurely
bustle, and again at twelve it rings a noon somno-
lence in upon Main street that is even more
startling to the stranger than the evening quiet.
For the full length of the noon hour one may
stand at the door of the Pacific Bank and look
down the broad cobblepaved, elm-shaded stretch
of Main street to the door of the Pacific Club
and be quite deafened by a step on the brick
sidewalk and fairly shy at the shadow of a passer,
NANTUCKET IN APRIL 67
so lone is the place. If it were not for the travel-
ling salesmen, a score or so of whom come in
with every boat, flood with their tiny tide the two
hotels that are open and ebb again the next
morning with the outgoing boat, there were even
less visible life at this season. Yet Nantucket
has today a permanent population of about three
thousand, which is swelled to thrice that number
when the summer hegira is at its height. That
means, including the island, which is at once all
one town and with a few tiny off-shoot islands
along its shore, all one county, the only instance
in Massachusetts where county and town have
the same boundaries.
Geologically Nantucket is a terminal moraine,
a great hill of till which the once all-prevalent
glacier scraped from the mainland and dropped
where it now lifts clay cliffs and stretches sandy
shoals to the warm waves of the Gulf Stream.
Bostonians who know their geology should feel
at home in Nantucket, for, while it is superficially
allied to Cape Cod, the pebbles of the stratified
gravel on the north being in a large part derived
from the group of granite rocks known on the
neighboring mainland, perhaps half of the mass
being of that nature, the remainder is of the fel-
68 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
site and felsite-porphyries so common in the
region about Boston. Here and there are a few
big boulders, believed by geologists to have been
dropped by stranding icebergs and without
doubt natives of Greenland.
The island holds vegetation also imported from
far distant areas and established long before
man, civilized man at least, came to it.
On favored uplands one finds the Scotch
heather and he might think it had been brought
by the loving hand of some Scotchman were it
not for the fact that the earliest settlers found it
here. They came, these earliest settlers, in 1659,
Thomas Macy and his wife, Edward Starbuck,
James Coffin and Isaac Coleman, a boy of twelve,
storm-tossed about Cape Cod and over the shoals,
all the way from Salisbury. For them the merry-
men breakers on the shoals danced as they do
for the incomers of today. They were not
sailors, not even the master of the ship. Per-
haps that is why they kept on to the end of the
two hundred-mile voyage. At any rate, they
did, and they found the Scotch heather here.
Here, too, one finds another strange plant, plenti-
ful over on the sandy peninsula of Coatue, the
NANTUCKET IN APRIL 69
Opuntia or prickly pear, a variety of cactus
common enough in Mexico and portions of our
Southwest, but surprising on this island.
In these two plants at least east and west stand
face to face across Nantucket harbor, the cactus
holding the sandspit to the north, the heather
on the main island to the south. In April the
prickly pear is as ugly as sin to the eye with its
lobster-claw growth, uglier still to the hand with
its steel-pointed thorns, but later it will put forth
wonderful yellow, wild-rose like blooms in rich
profusion, making up for all its dourness. Pro-
fessor Asa Gray, the distinguished botanist of a
half century ago, used to say that nothing in the
way of plant life could surprise him on Nan-
tucket. Probably this juxtaposition of cactus
and heather prompted the feeling.
Nantucket town straggles from beach to hill-
top and along shore at its own sweet will, gradu-
ally merging into wind-swept moreland on the
south and east and west. Here, again, Bos-
tonians should be at home, for the streets grew
no doubt from cow-paths winding leisurely from
house to pasture, and down them at night, even
now, some of them, the cows stray and nibble on
the homeward way. I fancy no town so indivi-
70 OLD PLYMOUTH TR_\ILS
dual in its characteristics still remains in the
State. The ver\- pavements smack of it. Here
is an old-time cobblestone, then long, smooth
stretches of asphalt. Again, just dirt, and the
three meet and mingle in stretches long and
short, in whose variations one seeks in vain for
a reason. So with sidewalks, brick passes to
flagging, to asphalt, to dirt and back again in
the distance of half a block. And even the brick
changes often and suddenly. Here it lies flat,
ten feet along it is on edge, perhaps ten feet
further on end. A blind man could know his
exact location in any part of the town simply
by the sound of his own footfall on the sidewalk
surface beneath him.
So it is with the houses, and I fancy in this
lies one great charm of the town to the city-
bored summer visitor. Xo doubt every old sea
dos: was his own architect, and the houses show
it from main truck to keelson. Yet hardly in a
single instance is the result displeasing, within
or without, above decks or below. Instead, there
is a fine harmony of contrasts that delights while
it rests. As for location, it would seem as if
each shipmaster, once he had the structure
launched, brought her up at full tide and let her
XAXTUCKET IX APRIL ;i
lie just where she stranded when the ebb began.
So they rest today, jumbled together in friendly
neighborliness or slipping down the tide toward
the harbor on the one hand and toward the wide
high seas of the downs on the other. The town
melts into the open either way and belongs to it,
merging gently with no possibility of shock or
rudeness. So it is with the people, the real Xan-
tucketers. Each intensely individual they yet
blend in a wholesome harmonious whole that
joins the outside world with little friction. The
sailor instinct is strong in them, and they bring
their barks alongside the dock or the stranger
with a pleasant hail and without a jar.
As the silver-toned Lisbon bell of the L'nitarian
church tower dominates the sounds of the tOA\Ti
so the gilt dome of this church tower dominates
the to\vn to the eye of the inbound mariner, as
he swings round Brant Point. So, too, in more
than one way, since its building in iSio, this
strong tower has dominated the home life of the
city. Its glassed-in crow's nest has been the
city's watch tower for a century and more.
And so in a measure it is today. The tire alarm
system, now modern and electric, warns of fire
y2 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
by its means, summoning the firemen to boxes by
numbers rung. Yet only a few years ago the
old tower was literally a watch-tower, occupied
always by one of three superannuated seamen
who watched for fires, and seeing one rang the
bell and shouted the location to the fire depart-
ment. One stood watch in the glassed-in oc-
tagon above. Two sat by the fire and smoked
in a room in the belfry below. If the wind was
in the east they put the stove pipe out of a hole
in the west side of the tower. If it blew from
the west the stove pipe was readily changed to a
windowpane on the east side. These watchmen
were paid $350 a year, practically a dollar a day,
and they seemed to have been as efficient as the
lately installed electrical appliance.
From the crow's nest to the church roof this
old tower is pencilled and carved with the names
of Nantucketers, written in for the last hundred
years and many an otherwise forgotten man and
event is thus recorded for the use of future his-
torians. Yet it is safe to say that no man of all
the island dwellers ever did or ever will tread the
stairs or look from the octagonal windows with
a more intense individuality than that of Billy
Clark, Nantucket's towncrier, now lamentably
NANTUCKET IN APRIL 73
dead since 1907. Each afternoon he climbed to
the crow's nest with horn under his arm to watch
for the daily incoming steamer. He could sight
it about an hour before it would dock and as soon
as he did the horn blew grandly and his voice
rang out over the town in a rhyme, doubtless of
his own composing.
Hark, hark, hear Billy Clark,
He's tooting from the tower.
He sees the boat, she is afloat.
She'll be here in an hour.
And so she would, and before she touched the
dock Billy deftly caught a bundle of Boston
papers and racing uptown sold them all before
the passengers were off the boat, unless they
moved quickly. But these were but a few of
Billy's multitudinous activities. He cried auc-
tions and sales, entertainments of all sorts and if
for any reason a public affair must be suddenly
postponed the quickest way to get the news about
was to slip a half dollar to Billy who forthwith
cried the matter with amazing celerity and ve-
hemence from all the street corners, tooting his
horn between whiles to get the attention of all.
Weekly or oftener Billy used to cry meat auc-
tions in the lower square, which have always
74 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
been a Nantucket institution; at these one bids
for his first choice of cuts and having bid high-
est is allowed such portions and such amounts
of the "critter" as he pleases.
Billy Clark made much money, as money was
reckoned in his day on the island but he had no
faculty for keeping it or even keeping account
of it. For thirty years his returns for his news-
papers sold were made from time to time to the
Boston office in, seemingly, such sums as struck
his fancy as being appropriate. These were
more than adequate for by and by the office sent
down word, "Tell Billy Clark for heaven's sake
to quit sending us money. He is too far ahead
of us."
As might have been expected Nantucket's town
crier died poor and would have been in want had
not a subscription paper been started for him by
the local paper. This, made up in large part by
summer visitors and off-islanders, amounted to
several hundred dollars, and at the end there
were forty dollars left with which to buy him a
tombstone. I have not seen this tombstone. It
ought to have a horn neatly graven, but I sup-
pose it has not. The town misses him, needs
NANTUCKET IN APRIL 75
him, more than one citizen says that, but so in-
dividualistic a place makes no attempt to get an-
other. There is something of the Quaker idea
in that, for though the island was once a great
Quaker stronghold few if any of the old sect re-
main. But it is the Quaker idea. A new town
crier will arrive when the spirit moves. Till then
the horn is silent. An off-islander might sup-
pose that the town crier was appointed in town
meeting as is the fence-viewer, the sealer of
weights and measures, the pound-keeper and the
hog-reeve. But that is not so. Billy Clark
evolved himself, so to speak, and the town
patiently waits a second coming.
From the watch tower one looks down many-
flued chimneys and sees a score or so of railed-in
platforms on the very housetops, often surround-
ing the chimney. These are the "shipmaster's
walks," often known as the "wives' walks."
From these one gets a good look off to sea and
can readily fancy wives and sweethearts climb-
ing to them to watch for some whaleship that left
port perhaps three years before. I fancy them
too high, too breezy and too conspicuous for
much walking by these. Thence one may see the
76 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
island round, and get a broad view of the open
downs to southward that tempt one to tramp,
seeking the edge of the Gulf Stream, led by the
steady roar of its breakers pulsing against the
clay cliffs. On the downs one gets a sense of
the whole of the island as nowhere else. Here it
is a ship at sea, unsinkable and steady, blown
upon by the free winds of all the world. In the
half-gale out of the west I note the smell of the
shoals, a suggestion of bilge in the brine, not al-
together pleasant. I fancy a heavy sea stirs the
slimy depths and brings their ooze uppermost.
I had noticed this from an incoming liner's deck
when off the lightship before, but charged it to
the ship. Now I know it for a strange odor of
the sea. It makes me half believe the humorous,
oft-told tale of skipper Hackett, who knew his
location by tasting the ooze on the tip of the lead,
pe who
roared to Mar den
Nantucket's sunk and here we are
Right over old Alarm Hackett's garden.
In a northwest gale the Nantucketer, though
far to the southeast, should be able to locate the
shoals and steer home by the smell of the wind.
On less uproarious days one gets all along the
53
f^
NANTUCKET IN APRIL ^y
downs the rich, ozonic odor of the deep sea for
a fundamental deHght. And always with it are
the perfumes of the blossoming land. There is
tradition of heavy oak timbers once growing on
Nantucket, but only the tradition remains. Here
now are low forests of stunted pitch pines, send-
ing their rich resinous aroma on all winds. And
in late April with these comes the spicy smell of
the trailing arbutus, which hides all along the
ground among poverty weed, gray cladium moss,
and Indian wood grass, sometimes starring the
mossy mats of mealy-plum with the pinky-white
of its blooms. The mealy-plum itself shows faint
coral edging of pink young buds, and here and
there a thistle plant, stemless as yet, looks like a
green and bristly starfish in the grass. Isolated
red cedars on this wind-swept down grow round
balls of dense green foliage four or five feet in
diameter, looking as if it needed but a blow of
an axe at the butt to send them rolling down wind
like big tumble weeds. Scrub oaks curiously
take the same form, and clumps of bayberry,
black huckleberries and sweet fern are often
rounded off to hemispheres.
Four silver-toned strokes from the old Lisbon
78 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
bell in the watch tower warn of dawn in Nan-
tucket in late April. This bell was one of six
cast in a Lisbon, Portugal, foundry, intended for
a Portugal convent of much renown. In 1812,
Captain Charles Clasby of Nantucket visited this
foundry, bought the bell, which had not yet been
dedicated, sending it to the island in the whale-
ship William and Nancy, Captain Thomas Cary,
and in 181 5 it was hung in the tower. Soon
after the stroke of four the sparrows begin to
chatter, but before long one hears through their
uproar the clear whistle of meadow larks.
These flit familiarly about the lower levels of the
town singing from gate-post or shed-roof all day
long and on the downs they vie with the song
sparrows in breaking the lone silence of the place.
Save for these, a crow or two and the shadow of
a sailing hawk, the uplands lack bird life in April.
He who would see birds in plenty, as well as
much other wild life, should go over Maddeket
way and sit on the shore of Long Pond. There
I found the bushy swales alive with marsh birds.
Blackbirds gurgled all about. The reedy shal-
lows held many bitterns whose sepulchral ''Ca-
hugancagunk, cahungancagunk" sounded ventril-
oqually from the reeds. Coot, sea duck, loons,
53
NANTUCKET IN APRIL 79
black duck, grebes, dotted the surface of the pond
and in all the sandy shallows spawning alewives
splashed and played — ^thousands of them. I had
thought spawning a serious business with fish,
not to be entered upon lightly or without due con-
sideration. Yet these made a veritaWe romp of
it. And in the crystal clear air overhead, swept
clean of all city soot, soared a marsh hawk or
two and an osprey. There was more than clarity
to this atmosphere. It had an elusive, mirage-
creating quality that made the osprey look start-
lingly large as he soared near. It was enough
to make one remember the roc that Sindbad saw
and get under cover. But he took an alewive in-
stead of me. All along the island in the steep
of the sun the air had this magnifying quality.
It loomed the white headstones in the cemetery
on the hill back of the town till they seemed
bigger than the town itself, symbolic perhaps of
how large a proportion of its former glory lies
here.
Nantucket's one boat out at this time of year
leaves at seven in the morning. From its deck
across its churning wake the most conspicuous
building is the old watch tower whose gikled
8o OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
dome gleams f riendlily. And as the beams of the
morning sun strikes this, like the tower of Mem-
non, it gives forth music, the silver-tongued call
of the old Lisbon bell. "Come back, come back,"
it cadences to all who pass, the melody clinking
clear far over the level sea. It seems the spirit
of Nantucket born of its warm spring sun, its
soft winds and the friendly lives of the islanders
themselves, a pleading that echoes long in the
memory and that few can resist.
CIJAPTER VII
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE
The Pilgrims might have been envied their dis-
covery of Cape Cod if they had come in the
spring of the year. As it was, though they
hailed it with joy, it being land anyway, yet they
must have found it inexpressibly lonesome and
spooky. To the newcomer it is apt to be a
ghostly sort of place at any time of year, unless
mayhap he be from some similar strand, for its
rolling sand hills are swept by winds that wail,
and beaten by a sea that grumbles when it does
not cry aloud. At the time of year when Stand-
ish and his men patrolled its beaches, it is no
wonder they saw savages behind every liliputian
pitch pine and heard them shouting in the wind
and sea. So far as the records go the Icelanders
came first of all and Thorfinn Karlsefne, who set
sail about looo a. d., called the place "Furdur-
standir," or wonderstrands, perhaps because of
the immense stretches of sea beach along the out-
side, but quite as likely on account of the mirage
8i
82 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
which so often greets one in the region there-
abouts. A much 'later explorer tells how the
curious atmospheric effects made the land seem
to tip up in front of him in whichever direction
he walked, making level land and even downhill
look like uphill, so uplifting is the Cape air.
Gosnold was perhaps the first Englishman to
set foot there, doing it first in 1602 and coming
again, as we all must, once we know the region,
Gosnold and his men got the eerie feel of the
place too when the winter approached. They
colonized Cuttyhunk and did very well through
the summer, digging sassafras by day and re-
treating to their fort on the little island in the
pond on the bigger island every time the goblins
chased them. But the shouting of warlocks in
the autumn gales was too much for them and
they reembarked for England, glad to get away
from the land which was so beautiful and so
strange.
A dozen years later came Captain John Smith,
who feared neither man nor devil, and who saw
nothing unprosaic about the place. As mariner
and cartographer to him it was a cape, and noth-
ing more. **Cape Cod," he writes, ''which next
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE 8^
presents itself, is only a headland of hills of sand,
overgrown with scrubby pines, hurts and such
trash, but an excellent harbor in all weathers.
The Cape is made of the main sea on one side,
and a great bay on the other in the form of a
sickle. On it doth inhabit the people of Paw-
met, and in the bottom of the Bay those of
Chawum."
The bottom of the bay means the region of
Barnstable and west, and the people of "Cha-
wum" were the Indians of that region. The
word sounds dangerous and suggests cannibals,
which I do not believe the Indians were, even in
those days. Perhaps it refers to their chief, who
may well have been an aboriginal Dr. Fletcher.
The word "hurts" is more difficult to dispose of
but I find it was just his way — and indeed the
way of the English of his time — of saying huckle-
berry. That delectable fruit which is so com-
mon on the Cape ought to have a name more sig-
nificant of its delectability, but perhaps the orig-
inal sponsors ate it before it was ripe, or too
much. Hurts is short for hurtleberry, which is
another way of writing whortleberry, the correct
old English form which we have since corrupted
84 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
into huckleberry. That Smith should have
classed the Cape huckleberries as "such trash" is
proper cause for a riot.
Two and a half centuries later came Thoreau,
the very prince of explorers, for he can take one
over well trodden ways and through familiar
fields and show him India and the Arctic regions.
Patagonia and Panama in one sweeping glance
along a sand hill. Cape Cod was as full of ro-
mance of remote regions as was Concord. He,
too, notes the mirage. ''Objects on the beach,"
he says, "whether men or inanimate things, look
not only exceedingly grotesque, but much larger
and more wonderful than they actually are.
Later, when approaching the seashore several de-
grees south of this, I saw before me, seemingly
half a mile distant, what appeared like bold and
rugged cliffs on the beach fifteen feet high and
whitened by the sun and waves ; but after a few
steps it proved to be low heaps of rags — part of
the cargo of a wrecked vessel — scarcely more
than a foot in height." Thoreau felt the eerie
strangeness of beach and sand dunes as all ex-
plorers have, and he noted, too, the, characteristics
of the sand and its vegetation and of the inhabi-
tants with a humorous minuteness. Writing of
■ft.
«
s
^
^
^
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE 85
the dunes, which seem always about to overwhelm
Provincetown, he says, "Some say that while the
Government is planting beach grass behind the
town for the protection of the harbor, the in-
habitants are rolling the sand into the harbor in
wheel-barrows, in order to make houselots,"
which seems characteristic of the beach grass, the
harbor and the Cape Cod spirit of making the
most of real estate opportunities to this day.
"Thus Cape Cod is anchored to the heavens,
as it were," he goes on, "by a myriad little cables
of beach grass, and, if they should fail would
become a total wreck, and ere long go to the bot-
tom. Formerly the cows were permitted to go at
large, and they ate many strands of the cable by
which the Cape is moored, and well-nigh set it
adrift, as the bull did the boat that was moored
by a grass rope, but now they are not permitted
to wander."
All of which would seem to prove that Thor-
eau liked to crack a sly joke at the region he
loved, as well as do the rest of us. The other
day I too crossed the Cape, not exactly in Thor-
eau's footsteps but through the region of the
"Chawums," which, I take it, are the Mashpees
of later days. The trail began at East Sand-
86 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
wich where the sandy road crosses the State
highway and goes on up the sandhills, always
with the blue of the sea teasing from behind the
keen javelin of the north wind pushing me on
southward. It was wonderful, that blue of the
cold, wind-beaten sea. It shone through the
maze of mingled twigs for miles till I finally
lost it in topping the plateau, passing from loose
sand to clayey bottom and fairer growth in
moister and more fertile soil. One fascination
of the region comes in the fact that in a few rods
one leaves all trace of civilization behind, unless
one may call the narrow road a trace, and trav-
erses the Cape Cod wilderness for mile on mile,
just such a wilderness as Thorfinn Karlsefne may
have tramped in armor with spear and crossbow
of his day, such as Myles Standish and his men
shivered through or Verrazani and Captain
John Smith marched over and mapped. Pitch
pines, small oaks of many varieties with an un-
dergrowth "trash" of "hurts" and scrub oaks
make up the forest which presses narrow cart
paths and hangs over them. All the way up the
slope the persistent chill of the north wind filled
the air with the tonic tang of brine and held back
the gray-green mist of leaves that strained at
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE 87
the buds, eager to be out. In hollows the spring
had come. On ridges it delayed, finding the aug-
uries unfavorable and waiting a new voice from
the altar. But wherever the sun shone in and
the wind was stayed it had loosed the butterflies
that soared or flitted or flipped about in joy of
long awaited warmth. Broad wings of gold-
margined, brown Vanessa antiopa soared se-
renely along under overarching white oaks.
"Little Miss Lavender" folded her gray-blue
wings in demure beauty on the gray cladium-
mossed stumps by the roadside, and dusky-
winged species of the skipper brood were agile
with new-born life, yet glad to fold wings and
sleep in the sun on the road. These were sprites
of the deep forest. None were visible in the
town margin, though perhaps it was the sweep of
the north wind that kept them away. Bird re-
gions, too, showed a definite demarcation. In
the orchards and open fields of the town were
the home-loving birds, bluebirds, robins, song and
other sparrows, swallows, and in the marshes the
red-wing blackbirds. Not one of these did I see
after leaving the open spaces behind. The avi-
fauna of the scrub-oak underbrush and of the
white oak and pitch-pine trees overhead was as
88 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
distinct as that of a new continent. A flight of
pine warblers was on and the oaks and pitch pines
were aHve with them. The j uncos had gone
north to nest in flocks of thousands, in a wonder
of full song, all eagerly pressing on towards the
hills but they left their songs behind them, as
it were, to be sung by the other birds. In the
pastures and cultivated fields the chipping spar-
rows, newly arrived from the South, took up
the trill with an accent of their own, and all the
pine warblers sang it, each with an individuality
that slightly but clearly marked him from his fel-
low. I think all birds show this slight but defi-
nite individuality in manner and voice and are
probably known to their neighbors of the same
clan, as we are, each by his voice. And even so
simple and definite a thing as the pine warbler's
song may be varied by the individual singer from
time to time. I heard one fine bird singing in
the stereotyped form. As he sang a flicker
flicked in the distance. Whereupon the pine
warbler sang again, the same trill but with a tit-
tering twang about it that just jocosely imitated
the flicker. I saw no other warbler or other
bird near enough to be the beneficiary of this
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE 89
joke. He did it just for himself, and his motions
as he flew over to the next tree seemed a visible
chuckle that ended in a saucy flirt of the two
white tall feathers which are one distinguishing
mark of the bird in flight.
Other warblers I noted none. The woods
seemed given up for the occasion to Dendroica
V'igorsi.
The wood warblers disappeared at the border
line of the open fields at Wakeby and the home-
loving birds appeared again in numbers, robins,
bluebirds, swallows and the sparrow kind. The
downy woodpeckers and flickers, to be sure,
passed to and from both zones, though they, too,
seemed to love the trees of the open rather than
those of the deeper wood, but in the main the
boundary line, as usual, was quite distinctly
marked. The noon sun was high and the north
wind's chill had been fairly combed out of it by
the bristly harrows of a thousand pine tops. In
its place was a warm, resinous fragrance, an in-
cense to the season. The heart of the Cape for-
est is passed at Wakeby and the blue waters of a
great lake lap in crystal clearness on the clean
sands. The Cape sands are a vast water filter
90 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
and strain out of the streams all sediment. The
ponds are liquid crystals in narrow settings of
pale gold.
Someone told me it was only eight miles across
the Cape from East Sandwich to Cotuit. Per-
haps it is as the crow flies, but I could not clear
the scrub as they do and I found the roads
adapted to delightful leisure. No wonder the
Cape folk do not hurry. How could they? The
narrow, gray ribbon of road strolled with me
through what seemed eight miles of forest be-
fore we reached Wakeby.-
Somewhere along there the holly stood green
and statuesque in occasional clumps. And thus
we fared on to Mashpee. The Mashpees, very
mild and genial descendants of the "Chawums,"
if descendants they are, live cjuietly in little yel-
low houses that do not look prosperous, though
the children are fat and the elders contented.
Modern civilization has reached them in phono-
graphs, bicycles and folding baby-carriages, if
the shingles are vanishing from the roof. In
1620 Mashpee was their chief and they lived in
wigwams. But the last pure blood died in 1804.
Nauhaut, one of the deacons of the Cape In-
dian church, which seems to have thrived a cen-
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE 91
ttiry or two ago, was the hero of a wonderous
snake story which, if it were not about a deacon,
one might think apocryphal. I did not see a
black snake on the whole journey, but they are
common enough even now and were once per-
haps much more so. At any rate Nauhaut was
attacked by a whole ring of them — so the story
runs — which approached him from all sides,
the snakes with black heads raised and hissing
venomously. Nauhaut with true Indian strategy
stool still as they approached, and even when the
largest of them twined about his legs and
climbed to his neck he made no move other than
to open his mouth wide. The chieftain snake
thrust his head into this mouth with its glisten-
ing white teeth, and Nauhaut immediately bit
the head off. Thereupon panic fear seized the
other snakes and they fled, leaving the deacon
master of the battleground. The Cape grows
some big black snakes to this day, but none like
those, nor have any later stories appeared to
match.
The Cape has informative guide boards,
though whether the facts match the information
I am not quite so sure. Perhaps, sailor-like, I
was circumnavigating Cotuit, beating in, as one
92 OLD PLY^IOUTH TRAILS
might say, instead of sailing directly to port, for
I found three guideboards at intervals of a mile
or two and each announced with monotonous
regularity that it was two and a half miles to
Cotuit. When it comes to making statements
the Cape guideboards stand loyally by one an-
other. But the little town hove above the ho-
rizon at last with its lovely blue bay of warm
Gulf-stream water, set in a sweet curve of white
sand and backed by neat cottages bowered in
green trees. It is worth walking across the Cape
to reach Cotuit at the journey's end, but I doubt
the eight miles. If it is not fifteen by way of
Wakeby, Mashpee, Santuit and the rest I am
mightily mistaken.
Thoreau with his usual clear gift of prophecy
said of the Cape: "The time must come when
this coast will be a place of resort for those New
Englanders who really wish to visit the seaside.
At present it is wholly unknown to the fashion-
able world and probably it will never be agree-
able to them. If it is merely a ten-pin alley, or
a circular railway or an ocean of mint julep, that
the visitor is in search of — if he thinks more of
the wine than the brine, as I suspect some do at
Newport — I trust that for a long time he will be
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE 93
disappointed here. But this shore will never be
more attractive than it is now. Such beaches as
are fashionable are here made and unmade in a
day, I may almost say, by the sea shifting the
sands. Lynn and Nantucket! this bare and
bended arm it is that makes the bay in which
they lie so snugly. What are springs and water-
falls? Here is the spring of springs, the water-
fall of waterfalls. A storm in the winter is the
time to visit it — a lighthouse or a fisherman's
hut the true hotel. A man may stand there and
put all America behind him."
This was all true in Thoreau's day and long
after. But the fashionable world has since
found the Cape, and brought its palatial hotels
and its million-dollar cottages to sit down in
friendly fashion among the villagers and share
their summer life with them. Thereby both are
benefited. But after all the chief charm of the
Cape is still that vast stretches of it are as free
from fashion as Thoreau said they always would
be, and the forests like those Captain John Smith
and Myles Standish, Karlsefne and \^errizana
traversed still grow there in wide stretches.
CHAPTER VIII
WILD APPLE TREES
Coming back to my pastures after long ab-
sence I am always surprised and often otherwise
moved at the changes which I can then clearly see
have taken place in them. Had I frequented
them day by day these would never have ap-
peared to me. Just as in the countenances of
one's best friends, seen often, there seem to be
no mutations and we need to think definitely of
some past period and then to compare the im-
pression with the present one to see that the child
is growing up or the old man growing older, so
it is with the face of the earth in familiar spots.
Young growth comes little by little, shoulders
bow day by day in the aged, yet we do not see it
when we dwell constantly with them. It is only
after long absence that these things suddenly pre-
sented shock us with grief in the one case or
touch us with pleasure in the other. After a
summer's absence, you find baby shrubs grown
to youth and youthful trees putting on a greater
94
WILD APPLE TREES 95
air of maturity than tliey had before. Coming
back in spring you are apt to sorrow over the
wrecks which the winter has wrought. Last
winter's gales and deep snows, and more than
all the ice storms, have left havoc behind them
whereby you may trace their durance and their
intensity. Tall birches whose resiliency never
before failed them were so bowed beneath these
storm burdens that they still remain with upper
branches sweeping the ground, like white slaves
sculptured in graceful but profound obeisance
before a storm king that has long since swept on
with all his retinue. It is strange to see cedars
that have always seemed unbendable models of
primness and rectitude bowed and distorted in
groups by the same resistless force. Very heavy
and long continuing must have been the ice on
these to thus permanently crook their red heart-
wood. The heavy brand of the Northern win-
ter yet marks them for his own.
Yet the pastures are so glad with May that it
is easy to forget sorrow for the passing old in
joy over the surgent beauty of new life. It is
easy now to believe what the botanists tell us —
that flower and leaf are but slightly differentiated
forms of the same impulse of growth, grading
96 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
almost imperceptibly one into the other. With
new leaves half-grown, with blossoms bursting, it
is hard to tell without close inspection which is
which, so tender and rich are the colors which
unfold from all buds. The yellow of the dande-
lion, the blue of wood violets, and the purple of
the wild cranesbill are not more delicate, nor are
they so rich as the red of the young leaves of the
white oaks, now as large as a mouse's ear, which
is the Indian sign for the time to plant corn.
The blossoms of the berry bushes are no more
flower-like than the young leaves among which
they grow. The green-yellow of barberry
blooms is not more fervent than the yellow-green
of the tender foliage, and the two colors blend
into one burning bush of cool flanie. I do not
wonder the summer yellow-bird loves to build his
nest in the barberry bush. Its colors at this
season are his own.
Other surprises meet men in the pasture this
spring. There is a particularly beautiful corner
which many city people have come to share with
me. On holidays and Sundays they troop to
their bungalow on the pond shore by the hundred.
Yet they must love barberry bushes and sweet-
fern, red cedar and white pine, as I do, for they
WILD APPLE TREES 97
have not intruded upon them, but have let their
own presence sHp quietly into the vacant places,
leaving the original proprietors of the spot un-
vexed. In this I see a new variety of city man
and woman growing up. A score of years ago
the advent of such a horde would have meant
more disaster than the winter's ice storms could
have wrought. Between these more kindly ad-
venturers and the pasture folk have grown up a
friendly intimacy which is beginning to teach
city ways to the pasture denizens. Therein lies
the cause of my surprise. Under the soft mists
of a cool May day I brushed the dew from the
wood grasses and unrolling croziers of cinnamon
fern to pause in admiration at shrubs and trees
bearing calling cards. Here is a red cedar an-
nouncing on a Dennison tag, 'T am Juniperus vir-
giniana, known to my intimates as savin." Out
of its nimbus of pale yellow flame ''Berberis vul-
garis" hands me a bit of pasteboard, and dangling
from a resinous bough is the statement that it
is 'Tinus strobus" that welcomes me to fragrant
shade. Like many city manners which are new
to country folk these seem to be a bit obtrusive
at first. Yet on second thought I find it an ex-
cellent custom which ought to be enlarged upon
98 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
in various ways. I can fancy people coming to
the bungalow for a day's intercourse with the
pasture shrubs that have never before met them,
and feeling awkward and disconcerted at not be-
ing able to recall names after a wholesale intro-
duction. I have felt that way myself after un-
dergoing a rapid-fire presentation to a room full
of people. If, like the pasture shrubs in this par-
ticular corner of the pasture world, all these could
have worn a name and address on coat-lapel or
corsage, I had come up to the second round able
to call each fearlessly by name and oftentimes
save mutual erribarrassment.
But there are minor considerations, after all.
I have an idea that the pasture shrubs may never
take kindly to thus carrying conventional calling
cards, and that shyer still and more nimble-footed
friends will finally relieve them of what wind
and rain have left. In a year or two I shall find
the cards nameless and built in as foundations of
nests of jay birds and white-footed mice, or
worked up more skillfully yet by white-faced
hornets into the gray paper of their nests. This
is a carefully adjusted world and the instinctive
movements of all creatures go to the keeping of
the perfect balance. The normal attacks the
WILD APPLE TREES 99
abnormal immediately and all along the line.
With shrub or bird or beast to exceed the world-
old conventions is to be firmly thrust back into
the adjustment or wiped out.
Yet, now and then the balance is not exactly
disturbed, but rather readjusted by some alien
that seems to find a foothold through all opposi-
tion and establishes a place through pure vigor
and sweetness of character. Of such is the ap-
ple tree that came out of the East with other be-
ginnings of civilization, reaching the shores of
Western Europe by way of Greece and Rome.
Thence it passed with the early Puritans to New
England. A pampered denizen of the orchard
and garden for a century or two the tree, so far
as New England is concerned, seems to be stead-
ily passing to the wild state. Old orchards grow
up to pasture and woodland and the trees of a
century ago hold on, if at all, in spite of the en-
croachments of their surroundings. Thus the
best of grafted trees pass to the wild state
through decay and regrowth, the strength and
sweetness of the wood seeming to bear up against
all adversity. The old-time trunk rots away, but
sprouts from below the graft spring up and the
tree reverts to the primitive in habit as well as
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lOO OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
surroundings. Or seeds, planted by bird or
squirrel grow up in rich, modest humus among
rough rocks where never a plough could pass and
we have some new variety, a veritable wild apple
with no semblance of the original fruit about it
but often a delectable, wald tang, a flavor and
perfume such as no cultivated variety ever had.
No tree gives more beauty to the wildest of New
England woods and pastures today than this.
Innocent of pruning knife or fertilizer its growth
has a rugged picturesqueness about it that makes
the well trained tree look pusillanimously conven-
tional beside it. I think the perfume of its blos-
soms is richer and carries farther and I know
the pink of the petals is fairer. The wild apple
is the queen of all pasture trees today and does
not need to bear a tag for the most cityfied man,
the most boudoir-encysted woman to know it.
To get beneath an apple tree, even in the wildest
and most unfrequented portion of the pasture or
woodland, is to all of us like finding one's roof-
tree once more. The race seems to have been
brought up beneath it and I take it for a sign of
decadence in the New England character that we
no longer plant orchards. It is fortunate for us
all that the wild creatures are doing what man
WILD APPLE TREES loi
will not and it may be that their planting will
some day give us so beautiful and well flavored a
wild apple that we too shall be moved to plant
and the country blossom with orchards once
more. All the best varieties were thus seedlings
originally and have been perpetuated by trans-
ferring their buds to the limbs of less valued
stock.
Just as in man bone and sinew count really
for little and it is only the subtle essence of be-
ing, the spirit behind and within, that matters,
so it is the sweet and kindly soul within the apple
tree that radiates love to all comers. In apple-
blossom time the bees will desert all other flowers
for them, not because the honey is sweeter or
more plentiful within them but because the woo-
ing fragrance has more of a pull on their heart
strings than any other. Again in the late au-
tumn they come to the ripe fruit for final winter
stores, drawn by the same subtle essence, distilled
from disintegrating, pulpy cells. I believe the
first cider making was a rude attempt to imprison
and perpetuate this charm, rather than to simply
make a spirituous liquor. So richly does the
apple tree give forth this spirit of generous de-
light that to all of us the trees seem to brood and
102 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
radiate a feeling of parental protection. Man
often voices this, and in ancient times there
were ceremonies which recognized the tree as
a kindly deity to whom reverence was done and
thanks given. To "wassail" the trees was more
than a jovial excuse for cider and song, it had
roots in a deeper feeling of reverence and grati-
tude. But those humbler than men have the
same feeling. In the pastures I often find the
apple trees literally brooding seedling cedars
which seem to flock beneath the outstretched and
low-hanging boughs as chickens huddle beneath
the mother hen for protection and warmth.
Where tender nurslings of this sort are scattered
wide in other portions of the pastures to find
them grouped here by the score means that some
selective thought has brought it all about. I can-
not, of course, say that the seedlings consciously
choose. Nevertheless, somehow, that spirit of
protecting love of which I am, myself, definitely
conscious when I come near an apple tree has
somehow drawn beneath it these plants of other
fibre that need its shelter.
To more sentient beings we may accord a
more conscious purpose, and that the wild apple
tree is more beloved of bird and beast than any
WILD APPLE TREES 103
other proves that they, too, feel the brooding
charm which radiates from it. Verily, a tree is
known by its nests. It seems as if the apple tree
took loving thought and prepared especially for
certain varieties while welcoming all. The robin
loves a solid foundation for the mud bottom and
sides of his substantial home. On the level-
growing apple tree limb he finds this, and the
kindly tree throws out little curved, finger-like
fruiting twigs from the sides of its big limbs that
help anchor the structure against all winds.
Farther up on the limb and near the slenderer
tip these curved fruiting twigs multiply and sug-
gest the very shape of his nest to the chipping
sparrow who loves to twine tiny roots and
grasses, and especially horsehair, among them till
his own light, wee structure is as securely placed
as the cement bungalow of the bigger bird. So,
too, the tyrant flycatcher loves to build his larger
nest, often interwoven with waste string till it
looks as if he had tied it on. He seeks the very
tip of the level limb and the blunt, sturdy, spread-
ing twigs invite his confidence as they do that of
the chipping sparrow. This bold exposure of
eggs and nestlings invites thieving jays and mur-
derous crows, hawks and owls, but the king-
104 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
bird's dinner flies by while he waits, and he does
pohce duty while he watches for it. He is
rightly named and no marauder dares approach
while he sits dominant on the topmost bough.
He is guardian thus of his less belligerent neigh-
bors.
The oriole, trained in tropic woodlands to
avoid climbers, instinctively finds the pendulous
tips of slender elm boughs the best place for his
nest, yet often in apple-blossom time he becomes
so enamored of them that the white snow of their
falling petals leaves him building on the twigs
from which they scatter. In July the incessant,
cry-baby twittering of the young orioles is thus
as common a sound of the orchard and pasture
as it is of the elm-shaded street. Other apple
tree nest-hangers are the vireos, yellow throated,
red-eyed and white-eyed, all of whom love to
build on the low-swinging tips of the benedictory
limbs. It seems to me that no other tree attracts
such a variety of beautiful birds out of what one
might think to be their usual environment. Of
these I may cite the scarlet tanager and the rose-
breasted grosbeak, both rather shy woodland
dwellers, the tanager the friend of the tall tim-
ber, the grosbeak partial to sprout land and sec-
WILD APPLE TREES 105
ond growth, but both often found building their
nests on the inviting boughs of apple trees not
far from their favorite haunts.
It seems, too, as if the tree made especial
preparation for the housino- of other less shy folk.
I know no other tree so nobly hollow-hearted.
At little excuse, if it be not good will toward
woodpeckers, bluebirds and their like, the ma-
hogany-like dense heart-wood rots, leaving hol-
low passages in the trunk and larger limbs, and
often in the smaller ones, too. Here are homes
for all who seek complete seclusion from storms
and enemies. The little screech owl loves these
hollows more than those of any other tree, and
sings his little quavering night song from the
dusky tops, while his mate and her eggs are safely
hidden in the blackness of the hollow below.
The downy woodpecker bores his nest hole in the
softened heart-wood of upright limbs and pays
for his lodging by devouring all grubs and borers
that otherwise might make his house fall too
soon. The bluebird finds his dwelling ready
made, lower down, often in a horizontal limb,
having neither strength nor inclination to bore
for himself. The flicker, too, loves the apple
tree and bores his own hole in upright limbs, as
io6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
does the downy woodpecker, often with much
noise and obtrusion of vigorous chips.
Nor need the list stop here. The red squirrel
and the gray, the bat, the field mouse and the
white-footed mouse all feel this welcoming
charm, this endearing hospitality of the wild
apple tree, whether born wild or grown wild
through neglect, and go to it for protection, for
food, for a home, or just because, like man, they
love it and feel sweetened and heartened in its
presence.
Soon now the snow of falling petals will whiten
the ground beneath all wild apple trees, carrying
an inexpressible purity and fragrance to the rich
wild earth beneath. Whither these melt it is
hard to say. They whiten the ground for a few
brief hours and are gone. I can fancy the wee
sprites of earth in whatever form they happen
to dwell at the moment, beetle or bumblebee, eft
or elve, gathering these eagerly by scent and by
sight, to store them away below ground for slow
transmutations of their own. If wrapped in bed-
clothing like this it is no miracle that rough
grubs should come forth gauzy winged and beau-
tiful insects that flit by and delight the eye of the
naturalist. If fed upon these it is no wonder
WILD APPLE TREES 107
that summer wild flowers of the deep woods can
show us delicate tints and woo us with dainty
perfumes, the very memory of which is happi-
ness for long after. Thus the tree makes kindly
messengers of even the rough winds of March
that sometimes charge back upon us for a day,
obliging them to carry the very essence of the
gentle good will and fondness of the spring
farther than it might otherwise reach and finally
bidding them faint and die for very love of the
perfume and beauty they bear. Thus the wild
apple tree, still the brooding mother of all wood-
land things, sends fragrant love and kindness
questing far through the rougher woodland till
its gentle spirit seems to imbue all things. In
all the pastures there is none like it.
CHAPTER IX
MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT
All through the afternoon of the fervent July
day I could see the sun sifting and winnowing
his gold for the sunset. All the morning his al-
chemic forces had been quietly transmuting gray
mists of midnight, vapors from damp humus,
moisture from lush leaves and I know not what
other pure though common elements into the
precious glow that began to haze the west soon
after noon. The old belief that the alchemist at
his utmost cunning could recreate rose blooms
from their own ashes had sure foundation. I
have seen the sun do it every June in countless
gardens where, out of this same humus and soft
rains, his potency works the transmutation as if
in a night. So on July days this father of trans-
muters melts in his crucible, of which the earth
under our feet seems always the very bottom of
the bowl, many ingredients, and distils from them
this pure gold. Soon after he passes the merid-
ian you may see it sprinkled lavishly from zenith
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MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT 109
to horizon, and as the day wanes it gilds all sor-
did things with the glow of romance. By it we
get the clearer vision and have thoughts of the
unseen things which are eternal. The trouble
with sordid souls, if such there be, is that they
have never seen enough sunsets. People who
live in places or palaces where these are never
seen have need to be born of noble fathers and
sweet mothers, to be carefully nurtured in hope
and aspiration and belief, or the world is the
worse for them.
Long after the sun had gone and the evening
was cool with unclotted dew, the fires of the melt-
ing burned high in the upper air and the gold
that had been thin vapor seemed to condense into
clouds that glowed copper-red with the molten
metal and cooled and dropped into the distant
hills. No wonder the miners go ever westward
for the precious gold, to Colorado and Nevada
and California, to Sitka and the Copper River, to
Anvil City and the Nome beach and across the
straits to Siberia. Never a clear night falls but
they see the alchemy at work and the precious
element going down in dust and nuggets and
wide lodes behind the peaks and into the caiions
just beyond.
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Usually it is not until the gold begins to pass
that I notice the nighthawk, though he may have
been circling and crying ''peent, peent" all the
afternoon. If you can catch sight of him before
the light fades too much you will see the white
bar which crosses each wing beneath and looks
exactly like a hole, as if the bird had transparen-
cies in his pinions as has the polyphemus moth.
Many a summer afternoon I have seen night-
hawks circling erratically above Boston Common,
and there their cry has sounded like a plaint.
No doubt these birds fly there by choice and bring
up their young on the tops of Back Bay buildings
because they prefer the place, but this has not
prevented a tinge of melancholy in their voices.
Like many another city dweller they may take
habit for preference, but the longing for the free-
dom of the woods, though unconscious, will voice
itself some way. The nighthawk's cry, falling
from the high gold of the waning sunset to dusky
pasture glades, has no note of melancholy but a
soothing sleepiness about it that makes it a lul-
laby of contentment. I rarely hear him after
dark. I fancy he goes higher and higher to keep
in the soft radiance of the fading glow. Only
once have I ever seen one sky-coasting, falling
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MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT in
like a dark star from a height where he seemed
but a mote in the gold, a smaller, point that the
green glint of a real star that had just come
through. It was as if his wings had lost their
hold on the thinner air of this remote height.
He half shut them to his body and dived head
foremost on a perilous slant. Then, just as he
must be dashed to pieces on the gray rock of the
ledge on which I sat, he spread them wide,
caught the air that sang through the wide-spread
primaries with a clear, deep-toned note, and rose
again; and in his ''peent, peent" was a quaint
note of self-satisfaction and self-praise.
It is customary to ascribe actions of this sort
on the part of a bird to a desire to please and
astound the mate who is supposed to look on with
fervent admiration. Sometimes this may be the
case, but I think more often the bird, like my
nighthawk, does it to please himself. There was
no mate in sight when this nighthawk did his
sky coasting, nor did any appear afterward. It
was after the mating season and I think the bird
did it in just pure joy in his own dare-deviltry.
He liked to see how near he could come to
breaking his neck without actually doing it. In
the same way a male woodcock will keep up his
112 OLD PLYAIOUTH TRAILS
shadow-dancing antics long after the nesting
season is over, and the partridge drums more or
less the year around. The other bird may have
much admiration for these actions if she sees
them, but never half so much as the bird who
performs. Nothing could equal that.
The most beautiful moonlight nights we have
are those on which the moon is an hour or two
late. Then we see the day merge into real dark-
ness as velvety shadows slip quietly up out of the
earth and dance together. These congregated
under the pines at first, last night, and waited a
bit before they dared the shelter of deciduous
trees. Long after that they huddled on the mar-
gins of the open pasture as bathers do on the
pond shore when the water is cold, seeming to
put dark toes into the clear light and then with-
draw with a shudder. When they all went in I
do not know, for I was watching the sky. By
and by I looked back at the pasture and the open
places in the wood, and all alike were filled with a
wavering crowd that seemed to trip lightly and
noiselessly as if in a minuet. Little by little
they blotted out familiar outlines till only the
tallest of pines looming dark against the lighter
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horizon had form. All else was a void, not that
of chaos but a soft cosmos of completion.
It is singular how long one may look at this
complete darkness and not note the dancing
lights in it. After. you see them, the glint of the
fireflies flitting hither and thither, starring the
meadows as thickly as distant suns star the sky,
making a milky way of the brookside and flash-
ing comet-like along the dry upland, is singularly
vivid. They sparkle, these northern fireflies of
ours, with a dainty glint that merely emphasizes
the darkness. Novv^ and then you may see the
larva of one of these, which is the glow-worm be-
side the path. You may get a very faint real
illumination from him, lighting perhaps the space
of your fingernail as he crawls along. He, too,
merely serves to make the darkness visible. The
firefly of the tropics is more spectacular. He
blazes forth like a meteor, setting all the thicket
aglow for a moment. The lights of our fireflies
are more like a frosting of the darkness, as when
the moon shines in winter and the light glints
from ice crystals hung on the frozen grass. I
like ours best.
The herald of the moon is the whippoor-will.
114 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
I do not recall hearing him sing on pitch black
nights. Starshine is enough for him, but I am
convinced that he is only half nocturnal and that
he watches for signs of moonlight as eagerly as
I do. Last night I saw the glint of it in the
upper sky an hour before the moon rose, a silvery
shine which did not touch the lower atmosphere,
but shot athwart the higher stars like a ghost of
aurora. The whippoor-will saw it, too, and be-
gan his call, which I do not find a melancholy
plaint, but rather an eager asking. It was a voice
of shrill longing, sounding out of luminous lone-
liness after the moon began to silver all things.
Slowly, like a benediction, this silvery luminosity
descended till it touched the tops of eastward hills
with the softest imaginable glow and filled all the
sky above them with light. The glow of the sun
drives the darkness before it and then appears.
The glow of the moon is so much the more gentle
in that it fills the world with radiance and leaves
the darkness, which it permeates, but does not
destroy. It is a newer evangel, which does not
seek to rebuild the world, but simply takes it as
it is and fills it with clear fire, adding to its rough
vigor purity of motive. I do not see how any-
one who loves moonlight can be bad, or even
MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT 115
morose and melancholy. Its light drowns all
these in a deep sea of peace.
As the moon came up, gibbous and glowing, its
beams seemed to skim into the darkness under the
pines as a swallow flies, scaling along beneath
the blackness of close-set plumes above, to light
long aisles between the naked boles below.
These that had been so invisible before that I had
to find my way among them by the friendly lead-
ing of the path beneath my feet, now took on a
radiance of their own. Green and brown no
longer, they glowed with the witchery of the level
light, their real colors only shining faintly
through this transparent frosting, this veneer of
cool fire, till the place was like those European
salt caverns of which one reads where the dark
roof is upheld by crystalline pillars that give
ghostly reflections of the lights that the miners
carry. Here, groping in the grotesque glow of
their own lanterns might well come the gnomes
of German tales although, so sweetly gentle is the
light, I can think of them only as kindly goblins
bent on quaint deeds of goodness.
Beyond the pines the path led me moonward
through glades among deciduous trees, no doubt
the abodes of elves. That may have been but a
ii6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
sphinx moth that flew down the path before me,
his fat gray body silvered by the moonHght, his
short, narrow wings beating so fast that they be-
came but a gauzy nimbus about him, or it may
have been Puck, training to put that girdle round
about the earth in forty minutes. Here invisible
creatures scurried away from a fairy ring whose
flagging is of round pyrola leaves, lighted
by ghostly white candelabras of the waxy blooms,
field mice, very likely, or black beetles, or elves
dancing in the moonlight about their queen.
How am I to know which? Surely if elves dance
anywhere it is on midsummer nights like this
when the dew has clotted on all the leaves till
they are pearled with a soft green fire as if from
caverns under sea and I walk down the path
through such caves and among such kelp and
corals as a merman might. All about me I hear
the stirring of the little people and now and then
soft airs fanned from invisible wings touch my
cheek. It may be moth, or bat, or tricksy Ariel
for all I know or care, such glamour does the
haunted air throw about him who will leave the
brown earth behind and plunge in its silvery
depths.
Pushing aside tapestries woven of such figures
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as these on a cloth of white silver, I stepped out
of the wood on to the shore of the unruffled
pond. Here a man might well pause and take
no further step lest he fall into the blue depths
of space. The moon hangs like a great shield in
a sky of soft sapphire, piled with luminous fig-
ures. Within the wood are fairy and elf, goblin
and gnome, half seen in the filmy light. Here
giant genie stand revealed, passing in the dim
perspective of mighty distances or leaning por-
tentously from the radiant sky. In the mirror-
like pond I see all these things repeated in an un-
derworld that is as distinct and clear, yet
strangely distorted. The miles of soft blue dis-
tance that stretch invitingly upward to the with-
drawn stars of the zenith, stretch as soft and
blue, but f earsomely deep beneath my feet to the
nadir. Standing at the water's rim I am on the
verge of a vast, deep gulf that no plummet might
fathom, into which at another step I shall begin
to fall, and once falling fall forever, for there is
no bottom. It is all very well to say to one's self
that an inch below the mirroring surface lies the
good gray sand which was there by daylight.
The midsummer moon is past the full and things
are as they seem.
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By midnight the white genie of the sky had
stalked off beyond the horizon out of sight. The
moon that had been so great among them with its
rim touching the eastern hills that it was like a
great map of itself hung on the margining sky,
had concentrated to a ball of white light near the
zenith. Back in the wood I found the invisible
little people out in full force, rustling, flitting and
calling. But the white light had gone and under
thick foliage of deciduous trees the real night had
come again, dappled, indeed, by flecks of filtered
moonlight which dazzled and made the shadows
more obscure. In the depths of the pines the ver-
itable darkness of Egypt smothered all sight.
Here the path must be found by the feet alone,
and it is singular what potency of understanding
thrills up from the good brown earth through the
boot-soles when it is needed. Every footpath is
a shallow canal through which you flow as does
water if you will but let it lead you. If the foot
fall but a little to the right or left of the wonted
spot some slight inequality of the earth that in
the full daylight would never reach your senses,
now sends definite messages to you. By it you
swing with certainty to the right or the left and
find the next footfall near enough within the nar-
MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT 119
row way to continue the guidance. No matter
how winding the path, it will keep you within its
borders if you will but give up your will to it.
Stepping from this Egyptian shadow of the
pines to the full glare of midnight on the brow of
the hill was like having a searchlight thrown on
you. All things gleamed in a white radiance
which had rainbow margins where the dew hung
heaviest on nearby objects.
By day in this spot the eye is photographic and
records every detail, by night you have the same
story told again by the brush of an impressionist.
It is the reverse with sounds. In the full glare
of the sun the myriad voices of the world mingle
in a clear roar that is a steady musical note, and
soon you forget to hear it. By night each noise
is individual, and leaves its impress on the mind.
Whoever remembers the quality of noises he
hears by day in the city, however great the up-
roar? Who can forget the soothing chirp of
crickets in the grass at his feet by night ?
Standing on a hilltop on such a midnight a man
may map the watercourses, large and small, for
miles around, though by day he can see from the
same place no glint of water. Here is a deep
lake of white fog which marks a marsh, and into
I20 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
it flow winding streams that are level with the
treetops on the margin. Here the moon by night
is distilling and vatting mountain dew from
which all wild creatures may drink deep without
fear of deleterious effects. It is the cup that
cheers and does not inebriate. The waking rob-
ins tipple on it and sing the more joyously, nor
is there in their midday any of the moroseness of
reaction.
Three hours later the moon had slipped down
from the zenith into cushions of velvety, violet
black, low in the western sky. Its bright white
glow was lost in part and it was haloed with a
yellow nimbus of its own fog distillation. Over
on the margin of the pines the little screech owl,
now full of field mice and having time to worry,
voiced his trouble about it in little sorrowful
whinnies. Down in the pasture a fox barked
distinctly and a coon answered the plaint of the
screech owl in a voice not unlike his. It always
seems to me that the night hunters of pasture
and woodland bewail the passing of such a night
as much as I do. The whippoor-will began to
voice his petulant wistfulness again. Lie had
been silent for hours, feasting I dare say on
myriad moths and unable to call with his mouth
MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT 121
full. The whippoor-will chants matins as quer-
ulously as he does vespers. Far in the east the
stars that had been gleaming brighter as the moon
descended paled again. The night in all its per-
fect beauty was over, for into the shrill eager-
ness of the whippoor-will's call cut the joyous
carol of a dawn-worshipping robin.
CHAPTER X
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED
In my town, summer, whom the almanack
calmly orders out on August 31st, refuses to be
evicted in person and lingers serenely while the
furniture is being removed, often until late Sep-
tember. In these September days I think we
love her best, perhaps because we know that soon
we shall lose her, and already the parting has
begun. It is not that certain flowers that came
joyously in June are now but dry bracts and seed
pods. She has given us other beauties and fra-
grance to take their places. It is rather that
summer herself is gently breaking with us, giv-
ing us the full joy of her warmth through the
day, but discreetly withdrawing at nightfall and
lingering late in her own apartments of crisp
mornings when there is a tonic as of frost in the
air, whereby October woos us.
The garnishings of her house are hardly fewer
while the moving van people are so busy, and I
am apt to delight in them all up to the very mo-
122
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED 123
ment when the sweepers, the autumn winds, come
and brusquely brush them out. Old man Bar-
berry is very happy at this time too. Since he
hung out his queer smelling pale gold pendants
in late May he has shown no touch of color, but
has wrapped himself stoically in sober green and
waited, as old men know how to do. Now his day
has come again and he is very brave in rubies
that fringe his dull attire and make him flash
fire in the sun from head to foot. Slender gold-
enrod girls and blue-eyed aster children, troop-
ing along the fields and over the hills, holding up
the train of summer as she walks so sedately,
think him adorable. If summer stops but for a
moment I see them slipping slyly into his arms,
laying golden heads on his drab waistcoat and
gazing with wonder-blue eyes at his coruscating
gems. I think well of old man Barberry, too;
better I fancy than he does of me. I admire his
stocky growth which has a sturdy grace of its
own, and I love him for the birds that he shelters,
the yellow warblers that love to build their cot-
tony nests in his arms. But he was born in the
pasture long before I was and he usually resents
my advances. His trident spines have a sarcas-
tic touch that tingles, and with them he bids me
124 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
keep my distance. But he is a wise old man in
his love for gentle beauty and he makes a fine pic-
ture of gold and green, ruby fire and tender blue
as he folds all these youngsters in his embrace.
Those spines he must fold very close, even to
the withdrawing of them into his orange coloi'ed
cambium layers, for there is never an ouch from
the group.
These are summer's flowers for remembrance,
the goldenrod and asters. She gives them to us
and goes, making all early autumn glow with her
memory thereby. But old man Barberry may
have these if he will. I like best to remember
her by others less common and less permanent,
flowers of shy dignity that begin to think of de-
parture when summer does, and vanish with the
flash of her trailing garments. Two of these,
the turtle-head and the jewel- weed, are little
known to careless passers, and elderly pasture
shrubs have no chance to lure them with Attle-
boro jewelry. They have their abode in cool
springs in seclusion behind the pine-clad hillside,
and would, I fancy, be ashamed to be seen wand-
ering wantonly about the open fields. I have to
make pilgrimage to their home in the middle of
the fountain head marsh to meet them, nor are
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED 125
their real beauties revealed to one who carelessly
splashes in. Instead, he is liable to be mired in
black mud and see nothing so good as his way out
again, nor will he even notice the elfin laughter of
black crickets and green grasshoppers who rub
their preposterously long hind legs together in
glee at the joke, so eager will he be for dry land.
The right of way leads over a level, firm trunk
of a fallen tree, one that has been so long down
that only a mossy ridge indicates its existence, to
a sphagnum mound which tops a stump as old
as the causeway. A swamp maple grows at this
stump as a back for my seat in this reception
room of the jewel-weeds. I think it is the sway
of the slender maple that puts me in rhythm with
the mood of the place and gives me eyes to see
things as they are, for after a little the rough
swamp snarl of straggling growth unravels it-
self, and things stand revealed.
There is the rough bedstraw. Somebody who
saw it first shall burn for calling such a sweet
little plant such a mischancy name. I protest
that the bedstraw is worthy a better. To be
sure it is rough. The prickles that line the edges
of its stems all point back, and while they do not
wound they hold you tenaciously when you touch
126 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
them. Thus the plant clings to other woodier
stems and climbs vicariously. But why bed-
straw ?' I trust that none of the people who came
out of the ark and set about naming things as
they followed had to make bedding of these
rough stems. With the whorls of slim green
leaves that climb with the slender stalks the
plants make lace and a green mist all about, un-
derfoot in the marsh, lace that drapes tall plants
to which it clings, a green mist out of which shine
constellations of tiny star blooms. Picking these
constellations to pieces one might place a hun-
dred of the tiny, four-pointed stars on a copper
cent and never overlap the petals, yet they shine
above the green as Orion and Cassiopsea do over
the frost fog of a winter night, they are so vividly
white.
I never see this at first. It is only after the
tranquillity of the place has shrunk my unwieldy
bulk to the patient potency of the tiny herbs
themselves that I have the sight. It is admir-
able, this potent patience of these wee things that
are born in bogs yet in their own world grow
stars the memory of which lasts as long in the
consciousness of man as does that of the Pleiades.
If you pluck them you will see by turning them
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED 127
over that these constellations are as whitely
bright to small eyes that look from below, from
the ooze of the bog or the roots of marsh grass,
as they are to our great eyes that look from
above. Of an early September morning in the
clear stillness I feel that they loom like varnished
planets of the sky in their own lowly heaven of
coruscating dew that coats all things with a
milky way of white fire drops, a dew that has
risen all night from the warmth below and,
chilled by the cold blue void of space, has hesi-
tated on every leaf and twig, frightened into im-
mobility; infinitesimal drops as shining white and
as close together as the stars in a winter night
sky. At dawn all the bog world is crusted with
this dew.
A great gravelly hill rises abruptly from the
southern edge of this boggy home of shy plants,
clothed with century old pines. These are so
high and so dense that the sun's rays cannot come
through with any directness, instead they are so
filtered and reflected from gloss of leaf and gray
of trunk that they have no power to dry up this
dew, they simply light it up, nor can the little
morning winds that play at surf bathing in the
pine tops, dancing hand in hand, ducking with
128 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
little shouts of laughter and singing songs
learned from the roar of breakers on gray rocks,
come down to drink them up ; so the stars of this
under-forest heaven remain to keep the bedstraw
constellations company until nearly noon. By
way of the lower heaven of bedstraw blooms the
eye rises easily to the forest of jewel-weeds.
These at least are rightly, if unconsciously,
named. It is not only the bloom but the whole
weed that is a jewel when the morning sun is low
and the reflected light slides level into the forest
among purple stems that shoal into transparent
green as they slender toward the leaves. These,
too, seem transluscent and glow, and then some
sprite seems to have suddenly turned on the jew-
els. Strange that they did not flash to my eyes
even before I came to the place, on my way down
the hill. Perhaps it is some trick of light and
shade that makes them flash on at a certain time
and glow like transparent gold shot through with
light. No jeweller could make these: they are
such as a fairy prince might hang on the pale
green breast of a dryad, a nuptial gift of surpass-
ing value out of fairy coffers.
At the thought I see more clearly still and each
plant becomes a slender personality of the forest,
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED 129
a nymph whose purple Hfe-blood runs clear in
delicate veins under a skin of transluscent green.
Out of what trees they stepped seems not difficult
to tell. Surely this one came down out of a
pasture elm to b'athe slim feet in the cool spring
water. Here are smaller, more slender creatures
that came from white birches, and that group of
stately -ones stepped out of the tall white pines
that stand on the slope nearby. No wonder the
other creatures of the glade adore these slim
green dryads of the swamp. The misty green
bedstraw fawns about their feet and makes lace
for their gowns. The polygonum blushes pink
and stretc'hes long arms toward them. The
white alders, to whose tips beauty and fragrance
still cling bend over them and toss white petals
and perfume their way, while even the homely
bur-marigold seems to glow a little better yel-
low in fondness, though it very properly keeps
its distance. Rough rushes nod three-cornered
approval and I am sure the spinulose wood ferns
crowd down into wetter spots than anywhere else,
just to get sight of them. In fact they stand in
such wet ground that you might think them
Nephrodium cristatum instead of Nephrodium
spinulosum were it not for the delicate fringing
I30 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
of their fronds which no other fern .can equal.
While these things happen I think I can see
the dryads quiver with delight and their jewels
dance and flash, living creatures rather than
gems. Surely if anyone may wear living jewels
it should be dryads. They have a trick of facing
you, these jewels, and looking like golden butter-
flies just spreading petal wings for a flight. At
such times I am minded not to move suddenly
lest they go off over the treetops like a flock of
goldfinches. If they should I should not be sur-
prised. With a change of light or position they
change appearance again and become tiny gold
dragons, winged dragons with gaping mouths
and little keen brown eyes that size you up.
Again each is but an ear-pendant, beaten of thin
gold hanging beneath the shell-green ear of the
dryad.
All these are early morning fancies, born, I
dare say, of the fine flavor of the place, drunk in
dew. At noon, when the sun shines direct into
the marshy glade, the dryads have gone back into
their trees for a noonday nap and the jewel-
weeds are but weeds after all, though beautiful
ones. Bees come sailing along and plunge at the
open cornucopia of the lower petal, which was
^
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Lie m
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED 131
the very dragon's mouth, after the honey in its
tip. Honey bees would find ready entrance, but
the burly bumblebees are far too fat. These
light on the lip, through inherited habit, no doubt,
but immediately turn to the recurved honey-
holding tip and plunge the proboscis through its
slender texture, stealing the honey from flower
after flower. In a day's watching I have seen
only bumblebees gathering honey from these
flowers, and I wonder about the fertilization
which certainly requires that insects should go in
and out at that open dragon mouth, not little
chaps, but buzzy, fuzzy creatures that will brush
off the pollen and carry it.
I have no doubt about the bumblebees and the
turtle-heads. Each vivid white corolla of the
groups that stand so stiffly on the ends of the long
stalks seems especially made for a bumblebee.
He goes into it as a hand into a glove, flattening
himself amazingly for the entrance, but finding
room to work in the interior, though not enough
to turn about in. On his way in, what pollen he
already may have collected on his furry back
slips easily off on the very lip of the stigma
which waits at the strategic point with the ant-
lers crowding well forward, but firmly held a
132 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
hair's breadth behind it. Thus each bloom is fer-
tiHzed with the pollen from some other, insuring
cross-fertilization. The bumblebee takes his toll
in honey, but when he comes to back out he has
trouble. If you will listen close by you will hear
him buzzing and burbling like an overheated tea-
kettle as he struggles. The arching filaments of
those fuzzy stamins have tangled his short legs
and he is shaking the pollen out of the antlers all
into the fur of his yellow overcoat. Before he
gets out he is right mad and loaded with pollen
for the fertilization of the next bloom. He
comes squeezing out, as flat as a pancake, sharp
end first, and though I watch close by I am very
respectfully motionless. But he gets all over it
by the time he has flown to the next bloom and
his hum as he prods his way in has the tone of
a cheerful "Good morning."
The turtle-heads have none of the frail loveli-
ness of the jewel-weeds that suggest half-visible
dryads, but they have a stanch beauty of their
own which I think makes them seem very comely.
Each corolla is a smooth, opaque white through
which no lig'ht may pass. It is easy to know
how it looks inside a jewel of the jewel-weed.
From without the imagination can appreciate
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL- WEED 133
that glow of pale gold which must there suffuse
all things. To such tiny midges and beetles,
spiders and moths as may enter it must be like
walking about in the heart of the Tiffany yellow
diamond. The bumblebee might tell how it
seems in the turtlehead petal, if he knows. I
fancy, however, he is so everlastingly busy and
so mad with the filaments when he is inside that
he has no time to think of atmosphere. Often
the pure white of this flower is tinged with a soft
shading of delicate rose near the tip of the petal.
It is an unobtrusive shading, as shy as the bloom
itself. Ashes of roses might describe the tint
better, for it is as gentle as the fading pink of
a sunset sky, a shade that has dropped thence to
the lips of these blossoms hiding in the dusk of
the swamp. You see it best by looking close into
the very face of the flower as the bumblebee does
when about to alight on it, and I think it is set
there to show him the way. By the time he has
seen that, he is near enough to be drawn by the
faint but ravishing perfume which is breathed
out by the flower. It is so faint that you must
come like the bee to the very lip of the corolla be-
fore you Avill find it. It is so tender and of such
refinement that when once you get it you will
134 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
think no blossom has its equal. The white alder
at this time of year is prodigal of rich and delect-
able odors. The jewel-weed with all its beauty
has none that my sense can perceive. But that
of Chelone glabra, as modest and withdrawn as
the flower itself, seems hardly to belong in the
swamp for all the beauty of the place. It should
rather be that of some delicately nurtured plant,
some rare orchid of sheltered conservatories, it
is so delicate and delightful.
The jewel-weed is as frail as a dream for all
its vigorous growth which reaches sometimes six
feet. If you pluck it it withers before you can
get it home to put in water and its jewels shrivel
to nothing on the way. Turtle-head is far dif-
ferent and I like it for its sturdiness, but most
of all I like it because it is the host of a small
friend of mine, the Baltimore butterfly. In
summer you may see this little fellow, a plaid of
yellow and orange on black, the Baltimore colors,
whence his name, flitting about, never far from
the place where the turtle-head grows. If you
see one you may be almost sure that the other is
nearby. I have not seen the butterfly for many
weeks, but among the stalks of Chelone I find the
webs which shelter its children. These tiny
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED 135
caterpillars will feed on the leaves till winter,
then by some witchery of nature survive the frost
and snow and zero weather, sheltered only by
this filmy, flimsy home, finish their growth in the
spring, waxing fat on the young leaves and by
late May be floating about, more Baltimore
butterflies.
There can be no better evidence of the witchery
and romance of the place than this, that these
frail pulpy creatures should with no covering
worth the name withstand cold that under similar
conditions would kill me before Christmas time.
When I think of this dreams of dryads that troop
down from the hillsides and stand, slender and
adorable jewel-weeds, where the cool springs
ooze from beneath the gravelly hill, do not seem
in the least absurd or improbable.
CHAPTER XI
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK
The memory of my first glimpse of a wood-
chuck always reminds me of an old story which
needs to be retold that it may point my moral
even though it does not adorn my tale.
A minister, supplying for a time in a country
parish, took a pleasant path through the fields to
the church of a Sunday morning just before the
service. There he found a boy digging most
furiously in the sandy ground.
"My lad," said the minister, in kindly reproof,
"you ought not to do this on Sunday morning un-
less it is a labor of necessity."
*T don't know nuthin' aboult necessity," replied
the boy without stopping for a moment, "but I've
got to get this woodchuck. The minister's
comin' to dinner."
Nobody has ever told whether the boy — and
after him the minister — got the woodchuck or
not, but there is at least an even chance that he did
not, for a woodchuck in saridy ground will move
136
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK 137
on into it, taking his hole with him, at a rate
that has defied more than one industrious pur-
suer. Just how he breathes while this is going
on is more than I know, for he fills the passage
behind him with the debris of his digging, but he
evidently does find air enough, for after tiring
out the excavating hunter and waiting a reason-
able time he digs up and out and proceeds to the
deglutition of kitchen gardens with an artistic
thoroughness that has been his since days of the
Pilgrim Fathers, and I will not undertake to say
how loner before that. I do not doubt that the
first Indian that ever planted corn and beans and
"iskooter-squashes" said the same things about
the woodchuck that I do, in his own language;
and I believe that the woodchuck then, as he does
now, just wrinkled his stubby black nose and re-
tired to his burrow to sleep upon it while the
garden digested.
No one to look casually at the woodchuck
would think he was hard to get, but he is. The
first time I ever glimpsed one I learned that.
The woodchuck was eating second-crop clover in
a hayfield that had been mown about three weeks
before. A little cocker spaniel and I were stroll-
ing in the field when suddenly we heard a squeal
138 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
that was shrill enough to be a whistle and a fuzzy-
brown blur streaked for the stone wall, followed
by another. The cocker spaniel had decided, like
that boy, that he had got to get the woodchuck.
I fancy he thought he had him when they came
together about five feet outside the crevice in the
wall for which the woodchuck had made his
fuzzy bee line, but as a matter of fact the wood-
chuck got the first grip. His long yellow in-
cisors met in the cocker's shoulder and that
worthy gave forth a yelp of pain and indignation
as the battle began with that strange hold.
I wish I might describe the Homeric conflict
that followed, but it was too full of action for
anyone to grasp the details. A furry pinwheel
revolved in varying planes, smearing the stubble
with gore and filling the air with cries of mingled
pain and defiance, for what seemed to an
astounded and perturbed small boy a good part
of the afternoon. Most of the gore and all the
cries came from the dog, for the woodchuck
fought in grim silence, though no whit more
pluckily than his opponent. In the end the dog
won, but he was the most devastated small dog
that I have ever seen, before or since, and had it
not been for prompt surgical aid at his home
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK 139
nearby I dare say Charon might have ferried
both shades over the Styx together. No, the
woodchuck is not so easy to get. He is quite
likely to whip his own weight in most anything
that forces him to do battle.
But I have never known a woodchuck to do
battle that was not forced upon him. In point
of fact he is one of the most home-loving, peace-
ful animals I have known. He is the original
home-body and if the market where he is forced
to seek supplies is not near enough to his home
he moves the home nearer the market. In that
often lies his undoing. His safety is in the
woodland border or in the far pasture stone wall.
There if he would content himself with aromatic
barks and wild pasture herbs he might dwell un-
harmed of man, who is his chief enemy. But he
loves the clover field, and often his first move
toward disaster is coming up from the pasture
wall and digging a burrow in the midst of the
clover where he soon has regular paths which
take him from one rich clump to another. After
that he sniffs the kitchen garden, and the descent
to Avernus is easy. He moves in to the borders,
finds a crevice or digs a hole, and revels. Nor
does he recognize the place as Avernus — which it
140 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
is bound to be sooner or later — but spells it
Olympus in very truth. Man may be the de-
vastator of the earth, and he certainly is so far
as its wild life is concerned, but as a producer of
succulence in the kitchen garden he is a deity
before whom any woodchuck must fall down and
worship.
For the woodchuck besides being the original
home-body is without doubt one of the founders
of vegetarianism. Born in the desert places,
feeding on locust bark and wild honeysuckle, he
added inches to his girth when he learned that red
clover which the early settlers kindly brought
with them had a nourishing quality that defies
competition. A woodchuck can get so fat on
clover that by November, when he retires for the
year, he is as near a complete globe as anything
with feet and a face can ever be. The convexity
begins at his eyebrows above, at his chin beneath,
and though he has feet, they have the effect of
being merely pinned on to the lower hem of his
garment, as those of a proper young lady in our
grandmother's day were supposed to be. The
woodchuck can get no fatter than that on garden
truck, but he likes it better. I doubt if Charles
Dickens ever saw the animal, but when he created
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK 141
Mr. Wardle's fat boy he might well have taken
him for a model. *'D — n that boy," says Mr.
Wardle, ''he's asleep again." That was when
he had ceased eating, and so it is with the wood-
chuck. In the early dawn when the dew is on
the lettuce, he takes his toll of the bed, seasoning
it with a radish and a snip at a leaf or two from
the herb bed. But such are mere appetizers for
the feast. The next course is the peas. He can
go down a row of peas that are about to set their
flat pods swelling to become fat pods and elimi-
nate everything but a stubble of tough butts that
have been shorn of their ladylike and smiling
greenness. Pea vines in the garden always seem
such gentle ladies, clad in a fabric of soft, semi-
transparent green, nodding and smiling, slender,
tall and sweet. But when the woodchuck romps
back up the row nothing is to be seen but the
smile.
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
I once heard a vigorous discussion amongst
men who know the woods and the ways of wild
creatures, as to whether or not a woodchuck
can climb a tree. The discussion ended rather
142 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
abruptly when one of the party produced a pho-
tograph of a woodchuck a dozen feet up a big
pine sitting on a small stub of a limb, looking
somewhat exultant but also as if he wondered
not only how he got so high but how on earth he
was ever to get down again. I myself would not
have believed a woodchuck could climb a tree of
that size if I had not seen the photograph, and I
fear there are some doubters in the party to this
day. But whether or not a woodchuck can climb
a big pine he can go up a bean pole as far as a
bean vine can climb, and return with the bean
vine inside. It takes but a few mornings for a
woodchuck who means to keep fat enough not to
shame his tribe to send a fleet of beans, that but
now had everything set in living green from
main truck to keelson, scudding down the garden
under bare poles, a melancholy sight to the ama-
teur truck farm navigator. On peas and beans
the woodchuck holds his own, and he reckons as
his own all that the garden contains. For all
that you find frequently one that has a special
taste. My last year's most intimate woodchuck
climbed the bean poles and romped the rows of
early peas as I have described. These were his
occupation, his day's work, so to speak, and he
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK 143
went at them at the first blink of dawn and grot
them off his mind. Then he retired to his bur-
row just on the corner of the garden before
either the sun or I got up, and slept the dream-
less sleep of one who has labored righteously and
fed well. I suspect him of letting out his belt a
hole a day on this plethora of protein that I had
been coaxing up the bean poles all the spring.
After that for the balance of the day Mr.
Woodchuck was a dilettante, sitting at his door
in the sun and dreaming dreams of artistic ele-
gance in horticulture. I used to see him there
about 10 A. M., wrinkling his forehead in the
perplexity of artistic temperament, batting a
speculative eye at me meanwhile, but not in any
spirit of resentment. In fact, he had nothing to
resent. He had absorbed the unearned incre-
ment and I had my original capital, the bean
poles, intact — and that's more than most of us
realize on small investments, nowadays. So I
dare say he thought I had nothing to feel grieved
about. Later he would sally forth and carry out
his artistic dreams on my Hubbard squashes. I
have never had Hubbard squashes pruned into
such artistic shapes as that year. The squash
vine is a great stragger if left to its own devices.
144 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
It will start from the corn hill where it is pro-
duced and go down the row fifteen feet, then
climb a corn stalk, leap to the fence six feet away
and eventually hang a row of Hubbard squashes
around a neighbor's pet pear tree. The wood-
chuck stopped all that. He began early in the
summer on the vine tips and worked inward
well up to the stump at each meal. The vines
were husky and had more latent buds than I had
believed possible. Every time the woodchuck
cut them back they started something in a new
place for his incisive pruning shears. Some
people trim evergreens on their lawns into gro-
tesque shapes. My woodchuck invented that
sort of thing all over again on Hubbard squash
vines. After some weeks I had a new and
strange race of decorative plants that, like Ka-
tisha's left elbow, people came miles to see. But
they did not produce squashes. Dilettantism
doesn't.
In the end, of course, like the small boy at
whose house the minister was to take dinner, I
had to get the woodchuck, after which the garden
was more productive if not so picturesque and
romantic.
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK 145
The full-grown woodchuck rarely leaves the
burrow except to forage. That done he spends
some time usually just at the entrance sunning
himself. But most of the time, day and night,
he is within, presumably asleep half the summer
long. The young woodchucks at this time of
year are more often seen abroad, for the parents
send them forth upon the world to earn their
own living at a rather tender age. They roam
the fields and thickets and do not seem especially
afraid of man, scuttling into the underbrush per-
haps with their whistling squeal, but just as likely
to sit back on their haunches and offer to fight.
The mortality among them at this time must be
great. Foxes pick them up and feed them to
their own young. Hawks and owls do the same
and dogs find them an easy prey. But enough
get by such dangers to dig burrows in the fall
and next spring move up to somebody's garden
patch, there to absorb feasts and defy fates until
the outraged householder stalks forth and deals
death amid the ruins of his hopes. The wood-
chuck sitting by his burrow in the far pasture is a
friendly little chap, whom I wish well. I would
not harm a hair of him. But the woodchuck that
146 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
has adopted suburban life is a menace of whom
I am forced to say in the words of Cato of old
"Delenda est Carthago."
The forefathers found the woodchuck here,
probably in the first spring garden which they
planted over the graves of the dead in Plymouth,
saw how much he had eaten and promptly named
him, his name meaning "little pig of the woods."
Chuck or chuckle is a word of their time, and I
dare say now, meaning ''little pig." The idea is
again expressed in the rather less polite form of
"ground hog" and the hereabouts at least, little
known "Maryland marmot" is a third. Scien-
tifically he is known as Arctomys monax, being a
rodent and classed with the marmots, very close
relatives of the squirrels. Perhaps it is through
this family affinity that he is able to climb my
bean poles.
The woodchuck has one other distinguishing
characteristic which deserves reference, that is
his ability as a sleeper. As a home body he is
great. As an absorber of garden truck he is
greater. But when the sun of October swings
low in the south and he has become so fat that
he seems to roll to and from his burrow on cast-
ors is when he shows his most surprising char-
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK 147
acteristic. Mr. Wardle's fat boy with all his
fame never slept as the woodchuck then prepares
to sleep, however well he matched his eating.
The first chill wind sets him to dragging- dry
leaves and grass down into the snuggest chamber
of his burrow and there a little later he tucks his
nose in between his little black-gloved forepaws
and goes to sleep. When the woodchuck is
leaner he goes to sleep by drowsily sitting up-
right, his head drooping lower and lower until
he finally rolls into a round ball and falls on his
side. But in late October the woodchuck is so
nearly round with obesity that he cannot roll up
and I fancy him just withdrawing his nose and
his toes a little farther into himself, and eoine
to sleep in that attitude with a sigh of content.
The woodchuck's chief fame seems to rest on this
trait, his ability to go to sleep before cold weather
and not wake up again until the spring has again
brought out the green things for his delectation.
To be sure tradition has it that the ground hog
comes to the mouth of his burrow on Candlemas
Day and looks for his shadow that he may figure
out how much longer he may sleep. But that I
take to be a mere literary furnishing, like the
chuck part of the animal's name, brought from
148 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
England with the pioneers and adapted to use in
this country. Probably it is said in England of
the dormouse, which also sleeps winters, as does
the woodchuck, though I believe lightly compared
with our animal. The woodchuck is far too
sound a sleeper to wake up on a February day,
whatever the inducements.
That matter is no more to be taken seriously
than is the old-time Yankee query —
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,
If a woodchuck would chuck wood?
which seems to me to emphasize the whole popu-
lar conception of the animal. Of all the common
New England animals he is the one taken least
seriously. Even if he does eat up all our sum-
mer garden we are apt to grin as we bear it; or
if we do go out and "get" him, we do it with a
forgiving, pitying smile.
CHAPTER XII
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES
When the wind is east Sumner's Islands seems
to tug at its moorings like a cruiser swinging at
a short hawser in the shelter of Stony beach. If
you will stand on the tip of its gray rock prow
and face the sea it is hard not to feel the rise and
fall of surges under you, and in fancy you have
one ear cocked for the boatswain's whistle and
the call to the watch to bear a hand and get the
anchor aboard. Just a moment and you will feel
the pulse of the screw, hear the clink-clank of
shovels and slice-bars tinkling faintly up the ven-
tilator; one bell will sound in the engine room
and under slowest speed she will fall away from
the sheltering beach, round the fragrant greenery
of the Glades rocks and, free from their buttress-
ing, prance exultantly to four bells and a jingle
out into the surgent tumult of the roaring sea.
Wow ! but the fancy sets your blood to bubbling
and your pulse to swinging in rhythm with the
long surges that leap about Minot's and froth
149
150 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
white over Chest ledge and the WilHes, that come
on to drown the inner Osher rocks in exultant
whirlpools and fluff the loose stones of the beach
into a foam that ripples over the breakwater into
the road that snuggles behind it.
But that is when the wind is east and really
blows, when November has stripped the oak and
hickory upper works of the cruiser bare of leaves
and she stands grim in her gray war-paint, ready
for the winter's battles. Now she is gay in sum-
mer greenery and many a string of flower signals
flutters from mast head and signal yard. You
must go astern to get the wind in your face, for
now it sings gently in from the west across a mile
of salt marsh, pools of imprisoned tide where
night-herons feed and tiny crabs and cobblers
scurry to shelter beneath the mud at the j'ar of
your footfall, winding creeks that twice a day
brim with silver water, and levels of quivering
marsh grass, to Cohasset harbor and the green
hillsides of the Jerusalem road.
The island is an island by courtesy only at this
time of year, aground in the green marsh. The
bashful tides of summer yearn shyly toward it,
and twice every twenty-four hours stretch soft
white arms up the creeks from Cohasset harbor
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 151
to the east and the west and fondle it. They hold
it close at the hour of flood, but hand does not
clasp hand about it, and the dry sand that links
it to the beach and the breakwater is not wet.
When the autumn winds shall come and the sea
shakes itself out of its summer lethargy and as-
serts its power and will not be denied, it is differ-
ent. At such times it roars over the beach and
the breakwater and drowns the white sands that
have kept the hands of its summer tides apart.
It marches deep green up Cohasset harbor and
brims the slender creeks. It passes their limits
at a leap, and swirls in defiant, dogged depths
over the drowned marshes. Then the island is
an island in very truth, and the sea takes his
love upon his broad bosom and rocks it, not al-
ways so tenderly. No man can guess the power
of the floods and the deep sea currents herded by
an easterly gale till he has seen the leaping of the
flood tide at such a time.
Now it is a time of July gentleness and frip-
peries of color. The salt marsh, to be sure,
never lacks these, even in the dead of winter,
when high tides continually load it with sea ice,
and then receding leave it piled with fantastic
hummocks and pressure ridges like the Arctic
152 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
sea. It has gleams of emerald and azure welling
from its hummocks under gray skies. The tat-
tered crimson of windy sunsets gets tangled in
its floes and flutters in ragged beauty, and it
treasures the sun's gold in the dusk of still even-
ings. Spring tints it with soft graygreens and
autumn seems to use it for a mixing pot for the
coloring of the October woods. All their flame
and gold are there, toned to soft warm browns
and tender olives just flecked with crimson and
with yellow flame.
Looking westward from the island at high tide
this morning you could see already deep hints of
this coming autumn coloring, swelling out of the
deep green of grasses that make up the main car-
peting of the marsh, touches of brown and olive
that are singularly pleasing to the eye under the
summer blue of the sky and its fleecy flecking of
white clouds. Amid these, scattered here and
there, round eye-like pools reflect this summer
blue and fleecy whiteness and all along the
island's verge and that of other islands and the
borders of the Glades was the pink of wild roses
and morning glories, both of which seem to thrive
better and bloom later in the season here than
inland. But the softest and loveliest coloring
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 153
that the marsh will ever get is that which the
gray mists of early morning seem to have
brought in and left like a fragrant memory of
themselves, the lavender gray of the marsh-rose-
mary. "There's rosemary; that's for remem-
brance," said Ophelia, and many a lover of sea
and marsh-side will carry longest in memory the
gentle sadness that the tint of the sea-lavender
gives the marsh when all its other colors are still
those of the flush joy of summer. Remember-
ing Ophelia, marsh-rosemary seems its best
name, though you have a right to sea-lavender if
you wish. If the sea fogs did not bring it as an
essence of the first glimpse of dawn in gray ocean
spaces, then I am convinced that the loving tides
bear it as a gift to the island and scatter it shyly
at its feet, after dark.
You have but to wander about the shores of
the island at the marsh line to find strange evi-
dence of this gift-bearing propensity of the shy
tides. Trinkets of all sorts that they gather in
travels in distant seas the tides bring and lay lov-
ingly at the roots of black oak and sweet gum,
hickory and stag-horn sumac. LI ere is bamboo
that for all I know grew near the head waters of
the Orinoco, though it may have sprouted in the
154 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Bahamas, floated north by the Gulf Stream,
shunted from its warm edge into the chill of the
Labrador current and drawn thence by the Co-
hasset tides. Beside this lies a cask ripped from
the deck of a Gloucester fishing schooner that
sought the halibut even on the chill banks that lie
just south of the point of Greenland. And so
they come, chips from a Maine shipyard, wreck-
age from a Bermuda reef, and a thousand tiny
things picked up at points between.
But the tides bring to the marsh and the island
in it, to all shores that they touch here on our
Atlantic seaboard, more than this. They bear
deep in their emerald hearts, generated in their
cool, clear depths, a rich vivific principle that
bears vigor to all that they touch and sends rich
emanations forth on the air beyond. Today on
the inland hills and landbound pastures the sun
beat in sullen insolence and the wind from the
west scorched and wilted the life in all things.
The same wind, coming to me across two miles
of salt marsh, had in its cool, salty aroma a life-
giving principle that set the pulse to bounding
and renewed vigor. It had gathered up from the
marsh this tonic of the tides, this elixir vitse
which all the doctors of the world have sought
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 155
in vain. Some day some one of them, wiser than
the rest, will distil its potency from the cool salt
of sea tides, and humanity, poor hitherto, will
find itself rich in possibilities of physical immor-
tality. Sea captains have a foolish custom of
settling down at eighty to enjoy life on shore,
else there is no knowing how long they would
live. They have breathed the aroma of this life-
giving essence all their lives.
Yet the sea itself is dead ; it is a vast accumula-
tion of the product of complete combustion, hy-
drogen burnt out. But just as dead worlds,
which are the molecules of infinite space, shock-
ing together, burst into spiral nebulae of flame
which are the beginnings of live suns and planets
and all luxuriant life thereon, so it seems as if
the atoms of sea water, ever rushing to restless
collision, burst continually into renewed life.
All forms are in it, from the mightiest mammals
to the protozoa which the microscope suspects
rather than surely discovers. Every time mole-
cule touches molecule in the depths, a new spark
of tiny life must flare up, else never so many
could inhabit the water. The coarser aggrega-
tions of these we see in bewildering profusion
and variety every time the tides fall back and
156 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
leave the rocks bare. At the bottom of the ebb
I like to climb perilously down the rough Glades
cliffs to life-brooding pools and inlets, where lazy
waves swirl or are for a brief hour cut off. At
the half-tide line the rock that is a reddish gran-
ite becomes chalky white with the shells of barn-
acles 'that cover every inch of space from there
down. Acorn-like, they cluster closer than ever
acorns did on the most prolific oak. After the
tides reach them as they rise, the whole surface
of the rock must be fuzzy with their curved cirri
of tongues which protrude and lap the rising
waves. Their number is legion, yet how infinite
must be the fine floating life, so fine that we can-
not note that it clouds the limpid water, on which
these sessile gray creatures feed.
Below a certain level these are crowded out by
the mussels which grow in such dense accumula-
tions that they cling not only to the rock but to
one another and to stubby brown seaweed till
they are like nothing so much as pods of bees
swarming about their queen. So dense is this
grouping of living creatures that the inner ones
are smothered by their crowding fellows and
serve merely as a foundation on which these
build. Even among these swarm starfishes and
'^
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 157
limpets and other crustaceans, and streamers of
kelp squirm out from the rock where they keep
slender hold, to sway in the restless water, just
as all the rocks above a certain depth and below a
certain height are olive black with dense hang-
ings of rock weed while in depths that are just
awash at low tide they are olive brown with
unending mats of Irish moss. These are but the
forms of overwhelming life that meet the eye
on first descending into the cool depths. To
name all that may be noted in just the pause of
a single ebb would be to become a catalogue.
Yet howsoever vivid the life or astounding by
its multiplicity it is not impressions of these that
linger long after one has come up from the bot-
tom of the ebb. It is rather that here one has
breathed the air of the deep life laboratory of
the world, that into his lungs and pores and all
through his marrow has thrilled a breath of that
subtle essence, that life renewing principle which
Fernando de Soto sought in the fountain of youth
which he thought bubbled from Florida sands but
which in reality foamed beneath his furrowing
keel as he ploughed the sea in search of it. It
is the same thrill which the wilting west wind
steeps from the salt marsh as it comes across,
158 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
some baffling and alluring ether distilled from
under-sea caverns where cool green mermen tend
emerald fires. The scent of it levitates from the
wash of every wave and if you will watch with
pure eyes and clear sight you may of moonlight
nights see white-bodied mermaids flashing
through the combers to drink of it. No wonder
these are immortal.
Nor can you take from the things of the sea
this life-giving essence, once they have attained
it through growth during immersion in its depths,
though perchance, as Emerson sang, ''they left
their beauty on the shore, with the sun and the
sand and the wild uproar." The shell on the
mantel shelf of the mariner's inland home may
be unsightly and out of place. But put your ear
to it. Out of the common noises of the day, it
weaves for you the song of the deep tides, the
murmur of ocean caves and the croon of the
breakers on the outer reef, and dull indeed is
your inner ear if you cannot hear these things,
and at the sound see the perfect curl of green
waves and smell that cool fragrance which comes
only from their breaking.
To the marshes in summer come the farmers
from far inland, making holiday for themselves
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 159
while they work. They cut the short salt hay
that seems so stiff and tough, that is so soft and
velvety, in fact, and pile it on their wains and
take it home to the cattle that like it better than
any English hay that they can cut from the care-
fully tilled home fields. Indeed the cattle ought
to like this hay. It is soft as the autumn rowen,
and mixed with all the delicate, fragrant herbs
of the marsh. The tang of the sea salt is in it,
and no man knows what delicate essence borne
far on the wandering tides to the flavoring of its
fibre. No matter how long you may leave this
hay in the mow you have but to stir it to get the
soft rich flavor of the sea and breathe a little of
that salty vigor which seems to go to the season-
ing of the best of life. I have an idea the cat-
tle love it for this too, and as they chew its cud
inherited memory stirs within them, and they
roam the marshes with the aurochs and tingle
with the savage joy of freedom.
Out along the rocks to seaward at low tide go
the mossers and with long rakes rip the carra-
gheen from its hold and load their dories with
its golden-brown masses. Then they bring it
ashore and spread it out in the sun as the farmers
do their hay, that it may dry and bleach. Just
i6o OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
as the salt hay, touched for a brief happy hour at
each tide with the cool strength of the sea, re-
tains the flavor of it always, so the Irish moss
that grows in the depths and is hardly awash at
the lowest of the ebb, overflows with it and is so
bursting with this fragrance of the unknown
that no change that comes to it can drive it out.
When the wind is off-shore and you may not
scent the sea, when the sun bakes the hot sand
and dries the blood so that it seems as if the only
way to prolong life is to wade out neck deep in
the surges and there stay until the wind comes
from the east again, you have but to go to the
leeward of these piles of bleaching carragheen to
find it giving forth the same cooling fragrance
which the tides have made a part of its structure.
You may take this moss home with you and cook
it, but the heat of your fire will no more destroy
its essence than did the heat of the sun, and in
your first mouthful of the produce, which may
in appearance give no hint of its origin, you
taste the cool sea depths and feel yourself nour-
ished as if with some vital principle.
It is no wonder that under the glare of the
midsummer sun people forsake the arid uplands
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES i6i
and the vast, heat scorched plains of the interior
and find renewed Hfe and vitality on the borders
of the Atlantic seaboard. The sea in the begin-
ning was the mother of all life and we do not
know what forms of future perfection she is now
nourishing as filmy protoplasm in her depths.
She gives us cool fogs to the reopening of our
shrivelled pores and just by walking along shore
we are touched by this vivific principle which
gives such riotous life to all things. There is a
saying among Eastern Massachusetts farmer
folk that if you will bathe three times in the salt
water during the summer you will not feel the
cold of the coming winter. Thus is the old myth
revived and the modern Achilles may find in-
vulnerability beneath the Styx, nor need his heel
be left above the tide for his undoing. And the
sea has more than that to give us, more than
physical well-being and invulnerability to the ar-
rows of the winter winds. Out of the green
depths come still the mysterious and the unknown
and up over the blue rim sail day by day argosies
laden with romance. Thus it has always been
nor can the peopling of many lands and the find-
ing and exploring of all continents and islands
i62 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
check this. However it may be with the cattle
it is this which gives tang to our salt hay and
touches the reviving coolness of the spray and
the east wind with the rainbow magic of dreams.
CHAPTER XIII
FISHING "down outside"
In the beginning of things were the cunners,
known along Massachusetts Bay mainly as perch.
Names are good only in certain localities. If
you ask a Hingham boy how the cunners are bit-
ing he will be likely to throw rounded beach
stones at you, thinking he is being made game of.
Down at Newport, R. L, they catch cunners and
if you talk salt-water perch to them it is at your
peril. Elsewhere they are chogsett, or perad-
venture burgall, but everywhere they are nippers
and baitstealers, and the trait which makes these
names universal is the reason why in the begin-
ning of things were the cunners. For the first
bait of the first fisherman that ever threw hook
into the North Atlantic was taken by a cunner.
There are today forty million, more or less,
North Atlantic fishermen who will corroborate
this testimony with personal experience. It may
be that the first hook was taken by some other
fish, but the cunner got in ahead on the bait.
163
i64 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
The cunner is not very large. He rarely tips the
scales at a pound, but he will eat his own weight
in bait in a day and he is numerous and pretty
nearly omnipresent.
Wherever the salt tides flow, whether it be
up the sandy stretches of a clean bottomed cove,
along the mud bottom of the creek, or amid the
red-brown tangle of kelp on some ledge awash a
mile off shore, there comes the cunner, suiting his
color chameleon-like to that of the bottom.
On the mud he is brown, on the sand gray,
but if you wish to see handsome creatures you
must pull them from some bottom where the red
kelp grows. Then their rich bronzy reds will
make you forget their bait thievery and love them
for their beauty.
If you will go back to Dombey and Son and
read the description of Mr. Carker you will re-
alize that Dickens must have been fishing off the
ledges of some English headland when he
planned that gentleman and his characteristics.
In whatever mood or from whatever side Mr.
Carker approaches you it is his teeth which dom-
inate the situation. I am convinced that every
time Dickens tried to make him otherwise he
found another cunner tugging and drew him up.
FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE" 165
Judging by Carker it must have been good fishing
for cunners. Like Carker this fish comes to you
teeth first. His mouth is so full of them that
they stick out like quills on the fretful porcupine.
Nature, which gives each tools for the trade
which he most loves, made him a bait-stealer
extraordinary with these.
The beginner who fishes in the salt sea does it
almost invariably with a pole, whether from clifif
or 'dock or from a boat. Experience brings the
desire for the hand line. The farmer's boy who
comes down for the salt hay tucks his long birch
pole into the bottom of the wagon and the trolley
tripper comes to the beach with his split bamboo.
Down in Maine years ago the pinkies used to sail
equipped with numerous short poles whereby to
trail for mackerel. In the day of your grand-
father and mine it must have been a sight to see
the crew of a pink-sterned chebacco boat dancing
from pole to pole flipping the number ones aboard
when a good school-struck in. Of course, all
that is a waste of energy and of wood. A hand
line is the more intimate and serves the purpose
better. A man is not really a salt water fisher-
man till he has learned the use of one. Then let
him go forth. Through that line shall flow to
i66 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
his nerve ganglia deep sea knowledge galore.
By it shall come to him in time all creatures of
the vast deep.
Lovers of deep sea fishing grow best from
small beginnings. They yearn from tide flats to
the spar buoy in the harbor channel, thence
through Hull Gut to the rocky bottoms about the
Brewsters. After that the sirens sing to them
from every wash of white waves over ledges far
out to sea, caution drowns in the temptation of
blue water, and they fish no more except it is
''down outside." They who dwell on the very
rim of this deep sea, at Marblehead or Nahant,
at Cohasset or at Duxbury never know the full
depth of its lure as do those who must win to it
from the Dorchester flats or the winding reaches
of the Fore River. To these latter only is the
perfection of desire and the full joy of fulfilment.
You can leave the shallow bays inland only when
the tide serves, hence gropings for a tender on
the beach of starlit mornings, the chuckle of hal-
liard blocks in the rose of dawn and a long drift
in the pink glow of morning fog while the boom
swings idly and the turn of the flood drifts you
FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE" 167
eastward. Little wayward winds, too lazy to
make a ripple on the glassy surface of the water
or stir the sail, play strange tricks with this morn-
ing fog. They carve chasms in it and open tun-
nels down which you see far for a moment, then
they wind it like a wet sheet about you and you
may not see the bobstay from your post at the
tiller.
They bring you sounds and scents from afar.
You know you are abreast Grape Island now for
you scent the wild roses on the point. Another
breeze brings faint odors of the charnel house
from Bradley's. A stronger chases it away and
you have a whiff of an early breakfast, brown
toast, fried fish and coffee, at Rose Cliff. The
chuckle of oars in rowlocks tells you that the old
fisherman is astir at Fort Point and the man
with the new motor boat over at Hough's Neck
is giving it a little run before breakfast, with the
mufiler off, as usual. A gull goes over, flying
low. You do not see but you hear the soft swish
of the wings. By and by the sun shows through
a rift in the fog and you begin to move before a
faint air from the southwest. A half hour more
and the shreds of fog are melting upward into the
i68 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
blue of a clear day, the wind fills your sail and you
are sweeping eastward with wind and tide round
the Sheep Island bar.
The Argo, bound eastward for the golden
fleece, bearing Jason, Hercules, Theseus and the
other Greek heroes, carried no higher hopes and
no greater joy in the dangers and mysteries of the
sea than does many a keen-bowed sloop or broad-
beamed cat bound "outside" on a fishing trip.
It is neither the goal nor the gain that counts.
It is the spirit of the quest. The golden fleece
looms eastward over all such prows. In the tide
rip of Hull Gut, where current meets current at
certain turns of the tide in such fashion that "the
merry men" dance gleefully, is a dash of adven-
ture, and if you come through with a cockpit half
full of water and your clam bait afloat so much
the merrier. Thus you are baptized into the
sect of the deep sea rovers and the leap of the
mysterious green dancers into your boat is the
coming of Neptune himself. Henceforth his
trident is at your mast head, a broom wherewith
to sweep the seas as Van Tromp did. The con-
querors are abroad.
You may bother about the skerries that skirt
Boston Lio;ht if vou will. There are cunners
FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE" 169
big and ravenous at the base of Shag Rocks or
along Boston or Martin's ledges. I dare say
there are flounders skimming the sand to the east
of Hull, but you will hardly care for these if you
have Neptune aboard. His spirit will bid you
jibe your sail to that freshening west wind off
Allerton and bowl down the coast parellel with
the long stretch of Nantasket sands. Again at
the spindle on Harding's Ledge you may catch
cunners; perhaps a stray cod. A cod! There
you speak a magic word to the fisherman from
the tide flats far inland. There is the golden
fleece for which the Argonauts of the land-locked
harbor set their prows to the eastward in the star-
light. A pull on the sheet and it is fuU-and-by
to the southeast, with Minot's Light looming
gray dead ahead in the gray wash of breakers.
Black-headed gulls swing across your wake, and
in their laughter rings a wild note of sea free-
dom. Thus the Vikings laughed as their boats
won to seaward outside the black cliffs.
The cod is the solid citizen of the sea. In some
localities they call him the ground keeper, and
he seems to be that — a sort of land owner of
the sea bottom. Just as ashore most substantial
170 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
success comes from land-holding, and those who
own the earth are almost invariably financial
magnates also, so the cod is a banker. Some
people, not financial magnates themselves in all
probability, have given this substantial dweller
of the under-water plateaus undignified names.
They call him pilker, scrod, groper, etc. This is
pure envy. When he bites it means business.
There is none of the bait-stealing tomfoolery of
the cunner, none of the dancing hilarity of the
pollock. It is just a steady down tug that makes
the line cut your fingers and likely takes your
hand under water. If he is a good one you will
need to sit back and snub the line over the gun-
wale in that first plunge which follows the stab of
the hook. Then it is a steady, muscle-grinding
pull to get him up. It is a stogy, heavy resistance
which he ofifers. To lift him out of his depths
is a good deal like explaining to a middle-class
Englishman something that he does not wish to
comprehend, but by and by, leaning perilously
over the rail, you see his tawny bulk coming up
through a well of chrysophrase lined with the
scintillant gold of the imprisoned sun. A lift
and a swing, and he is aboard. He may weigh
anything from a few pounds up to a score. Cod
FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE" 171
have been caught weighing 150 pounds, but not
in Massachusetts Bay of late years.
A half-mile to the east of Minot's and south-
ward to beyond Scituate harbor runs an irregular
ridge along the sea bottom at a depth of six to
ten fathoms, while to the east and west is deeper
water. Something like a half-mile farther east-
ward again you will find another, both probably
moraines of sand and gravel on fhe sea bottom
like those one finds ashore. These ridges the fish
seem to frequent rather than the valleys between,
and if you will ease your sheets and, setting your
boat's prow a little off the wind, drift slowly
along these ridges, you will be able to cast your
lines among the best of the summer society. The
cod go into things only on the ground flood. It
is a way substantial citizens have. You will need
to let your sinker strike bottom and then lift it a
little, but not too far. A greased lead dropped
will show you a variety of bottom. Here are
rocks, about which especially the cod congregate
and where sometimes giant cunners dwell, there
is a sandy stretch which is beloved of the big
flounders, which when hooked make a gallant
though unsteady fight before you get them up.
I am always sorry for the flounder. He looks
172 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
as if he might have once been a fish of re-
spectable, perhaps even beautiful shape and pro-
portions, that had met with an accident. He is
a shore frequenter, especially when young, and
I cannot help thinking that in antediluvian days
when mastodons were plentiful and went wading
they stepped on the flounders. A flounder is
shaped just as if he had been run over by an
Atlantic avenue truck. His eyes moved over
onto one side of his head, fleeing hand in hand to
escape the wheel. His mouth was mashed fairly
and seems to be perpetually ejaculatmg "Help,
murder!" and one side of him is still white as
snow with the fear of the affair. He ought to
be in a cripples' home, but he is not. Listead he
is as jolly as a sand man and amply able to take
care of his wreck of a body, which is flat indeed
but fat. Necessity is the mother of invention.
When the flounder sees food that he wants he
falls upon it and holds it down with ease while
he devours it. A slender flsh would have no such
chance.
At this time of year come roving northward
from unknown feeding grounds outside the Cape
the haddock. There are people who call the had-
dock "scoodled skull-joe," probably in derision
FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE" 173
because he is such a dapper fish. He is so silvery
and neat that the black stripe down his side seems
to give him the effect of being clad in the very
latest thing in summer trousers. The Banks
fishermen who sail from Gloucester'and are prob-
ably more intimately acquainted with the per-
sonal affairs of fishes than anyone else, say that
the haddock, though now reformed, has not al-
ways been what he should be. The haddock,
they say, was once such a young sport and con-
ducted himself in such unseemly fashion that he
was in danger of hell fire. In fact, the devil,
searching the Grand Banks for whom he might
devour, took the shameless youngster between his
finger and thumb and held him aloft in glee, say-
ing, "You for the gridiron." But the agile had-
dock, skilled in getting out of scrapes, squirmed
loose and fled in the depths of the sea. In proof
of this adventure if you examine a haddock's
body just behind the gills you will see the marks
where the Old Boy's fingers scorched him, the
scars remaining to this day. I am not sure
whether this fable teaches us to be good or to be
agile.
With the cod, as often most intimately with
him in the boneless codfish box, come the hake
174 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
and the cusk, both rated as inferior fish, though it
is hard to see why. The cusk in particular is es-
teemed by the fishermen for their own use above
any other fish that is taken from the trawls on
the banks. Go down into the forepeak of any
Gloucesterman and ask the crew, while they
"mug up," if they like baked cusk. You will see
their mouths water and their eyes shine in ap-
preciation of the suggestion. Yet the cusk is
hardly a beauty. In fact, the first man who sug-
gested eating him must have been hungry or else
adventurous beyond the common run of men. If
you will take a bilious looking eel and compress
him lengthwise till the becomes a stubby bunch,
put on him a pair of yellow goggle eyes that stare
madly as if at ghosts, and seem, withal to be
sadly afflicted with strabismus, you will have the
beginnings of a cusk. Then he must have a
broad fin that begins at the back of his neck,
promenades his spine to and including his tail and
returns beneath him to the spot where some
people wear neckties. That is a part of the para-
phernalia of this denizen of the deep sea. Often
when brought to the surface this peculiar fish will
swell up with imprisoned air until he is enor-
mously fat and covered with blisters.
FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE" 175
The cod and the flounders, cunners and pol-
lock will make up the bulk of your catch as you
drift along these under-sea moraines, though
now and then a freak may come to your hook in
the shape of a dogfish or a skate. These are to
be looked for and welcomed. Once the horse
mackerel struck into Massachusetts Bay. These
weigh a thousand pounds apiece and take live fish
of considerable size on the fly. In those days a
deep-sea fisherman, hauling in a respectable cod,
was likely to find adventure enousrh with the situ-
ation suddenly reversed and a horse mackerel
hauling in the line with the fisherman on the end
of it.
It is leviathans of the deep like these that Jason
Theseus and their companion Greeks bear in
mind as the Argo drifts and the catch steadily
grows. By and by the low sun flares red through
surly clouds of nightfall. The sea is getting up
and it is a long sail up the coast to the lee of the
outer light. Then with darkness gathering and
a head wind and tide the real glory of the day
comes. Out of the black west blows half a gale.
The waves curl in ghostly phosphorescence and
the merry men dance wildly in Hull Gut. It is
a long and dogged fight to win through these
176 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
against the swift tide to the comparative safety
of the shelter of Peddocks, where you catch the
back wash that helps you well along the lee of
Prince's Head.
And so the Argonauts sail westward again in
the pitch blackness of the gathering storm.
They know the harbor floor as they know the
floors of their homes and can as well feel their
way. What if the falling tide leaves the flats
bare and they may not win to the mooring, but
must lie at anchor off the channel edge until
morning shows gray through the rain? They
have won the golden fleece of adventure from
the blue sea to eastward and sailed home with it.
CHAPTER XIV
VOICES OF THE BROOKSIDE
For two hundred years the water has rippled
over the sill on which once firmly set the gate to
the old milldam. Of the mill, save this, no sliver
of wood remains, and even the tradition of the
miller and his work is gone. We merely know
that here stood one of the grist mills of the early
pioneers, a mill to which the neighbors brought
their corn in sacks, perchance upon their shoul-
ders, and after the wheel had turned and the grist
was ground, carried the meal off in the same way.
Thus rapidly does the smoothing hand of time
wipe out man and his works.
But still the water ripples over the old, brown
oak sill, and he who listens may hear the brook
telling a story all day long in purling undertones.
I fancy its language a simple one, too, but its
words of one syllable tumble so swiftly over one
another that, in spite of their liquid purity of
tone, I never quite catch them. It is the brook's
rapidity of utterance that troubles me. I am
177
178 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
quite sure, alvva3^s, that if I really got the syllables
and wrote them down I should, with study, be
able to translate it all. It ought not to be half so
difficult as these hieroglyphic and cuneiform in-
scriptions on stone and brick buried in Assyrian
ruins for ten thousand years, more or less, and
now blithely put into modern sipeech by the
Egyptologists.
The brook writes for me, too. On every placid
pool at the foot of some race of ripples it mixes
Morse-code dots and dashes with stenographic
curves, all written in white foam on the smooth
black mirror of the surface. Nor does it end
there, so eager it is to call its message to my no-
tice. Through the quiver of sun and shade it
sends heliograph flashes to me on the bank, mak-
ing again the dots and dashes of the Morse-code
alphabet, yet still with such lightning-like rapidity
that my dull eye fails to read. Only the foam
writing gives brief opportunity for one to study
the characters and decide what they mean.
Sometimes there it is not difficult to find words in
the Morse-code and phrases in the stenographic
curves though I have no more than a word or a
brief phrase before the current rearranges the
puzzle and I must begin all over again. I doubt
VOICES OF THE BROOKSIDE 179
not many brookside idlers have done as much
as that. I fancy many a summer couple, say a
brave telegraph clerk and a fair stenographer,
have worked out as much as ''I love you" and
"God bless our home" long before this.
After all, the brook is shallow and it is prob-
able that it prattles merely the gossip of today
and yesterday and the days gone by. Yet even
so it might give me the story of this mill that so
long ago stood upon its bank, something of the
talk of the miller and his customer and the events
of their time, matter I can get from no printed
book nor from the tongue of man now living.
Could I but get this I should have a rare book
indeed, for nothing is so vivid to the reader as
the true story of the plain life, the words and
deeds of folk who lived a hundred or more years
ago. The plain tales of Boswell, Pepys, Samuel
Sewall, will live when all the series of six best
sellers that have ever been are drifting dust.
The brook tells me more of nature than it does
of man, perhaps because it has known man for so
short a time, though I should say shows rather
than tells. A hundred forms of life live in it
and on it, while through the air above float a
thousand more, or the evidences of them. Down
i8o OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
stream come the scents of the flowers in bloom
above. Just a week or two ago the dominant
odor among these was the sticky sweetness of the
azalea. It is an odor that breathes of laziness.
Only the hot, damp breath of the swamp carries
it and lulls to languor and to sensuous dreams.
Mid-August is near and though here and there a
belated azalea bloom still glows white in the dusk
of the swamp its odor seems to have no power to
ride the wind. Instead a cleaner, finer perfume
dances in rhythmic motion down the dell, sway-
ing in sprightly time to the under rhythm of the
brook's tone, a scent that seems to laugh as it
greets you, yet in no wise losing its inherent,
gentle dignity. The wild clematis is the fairest
maiden of the woodland. She, I am convinced,
knows all the brook says and loves to listen to it,
twining her arms about the alder shrubs, bending
low till her starry eyes are mirrored in the
dimpled surface beneath her, and always sending
this teasing, dainty perfume out upon the breeze
that it may call to her new friends. Long ago
the Greeks named the Clematis Virgin's Bower,
but our wild variety is more than that. It is the
virgin.
To smell the perfume of the clematis on the
O
VOICES OF THE BROOKSIDE i8i
lazy wind and to watch the myriad people of the
brook is joy enough for an August afternoon.
Bird songs come to me from the trees overhead,
far and near, some of them melodious, others
songs only by courtesy. Down stream a red-
eyed vireo preaches persistently in an elm top.
Across the pasture I hear the rich voice of an
oriole stopping his caterpillar hunting long
enough to trill a round phrase or two from the
apple-tree bough. A flock of chickadees, old and
young, comes through, nervously active in their
hunting and with voices in which there is a tang
of the coming autumn. Up in the pines a blue jay
clamors with the same clarion ring in his tones.
I do not know whether the different quality is in
the air, or in the birds, but I am sure that after
the first of August is past I could tell it by the
notes of these two even if I had lost all track of
the calendar. A black and white creeping
warbler comes head first down a nearby tree, and
then sits right side up a moment to squeak the
half-dozen squeaks which are his best in the way
of melody. Like a fine accompaniment the
brook's voice blends with all these, mellows and
supplements them till in the woodland symphony
there is no jarring note. Nature has this won-
i82 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
derful faculty for soothing and harmonizing in
all things. She will take colors that placed side
by side in silks would cry to heaven for a separa-
tion, and combine them in a flower group, or
sometimes indeed in a single flower, so skilfully
that we accept the whole as beautiful without a
question.
While I enjoy these things an eddy of wind
brings from down the stream the fresh, moist
smell of the water itself, and running through
this I note just a suggestion of musk. All the
other scents and sounds have been of a soothing
quality, especially in combination with each
other. In this suggestion of musk is something
which bids one sit up and watch out. By and by
I see the beast, a muskrat, steamboating his v^ay
up the rapids like a furry Maid-of-the-Mist, or
perhaps I should say a submarine, that navigates
the surface with but little bulk exposed. Pres-
ently he proves himself a submarine by diving in
a shallow. I see his paws stirring up mud and
presently again he comes to the surface with a
fresh-water clam. Clams in August are good,
though I confess I have never tried the fresh-
water variety. The muskrat knows, however,
that these are good. He sits up on a rock,
VOICES OF THE BROOKSIDE 183
washes the mud carefully from his catch, opens
it as readily as if his incisors were a knife,
smacks his lips over the last of its contents, peers
into the empty shell as if he hoped to find a pearl,
drops them and bustles on his way. I do not
know his errand and I doubt if he does, but I
know it was an important one by the way he goes
on it.
The passing of the beast, however, upset the
life of the shallow, amber pool. The mud of his
digging had no more than cleared away before
the under-water creatures of the place, jackals on
the lion's spoor, came forward, eager to feast on
the remnants of his meal. Bream, sunning
themselves on the shallow margins of the other
side, give a sinuous swish to their tails and dart
up. A yellow perch poises, slips forward a yard,
poises again and then thinking the place safe,
comes forward for his share. In beauty and in-
telligence the yellow perch is easily the king of
the brook waters and I can but admire his color-
ing, not only for its beauty but for its protective
value. His dark back makes him almost invis-
ible from directly above. Should you get a
glimpse of his side you might well think it but
the ripple of sunlight and shadow in the water,
i84 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
so well is this simulated by the broad bands of
green and yellow which run from the dark back
down the sides. It is only when he turns far on
his side and gives you a glimpse of red fin and
white belly that he is plainly visible, and only
desperate need will make him thus turn.
After perch and bream have left, satisfied,
a little group of thumbling hornpouts come and
grub and dabble in the muddy hole whence the
unio came, feeding upon I know not what ; prob-
ably tiny infusorise of the fresh water. These
little black cats are the busiest folk of the brook
at this time of the year, and just whence they
come or whither they go I cannot say. If you
fish the waters with angle worms you will not
pull out one of these little fellows till the summer
is fairly on. Then, dog days having arrived,
you will get a chance to catch nothing else, so
long as one of them remains in the pool you
choose. They are great angle-worm chasers and
will get across a pool and grab a bait before any
other denizen of the place can possibly get to it.
Their agility is the more surprising when one
remembers that the grown hornpout is but a slug-
gish chap and that they are not built on lines that
presage swiftness. You may catch the big horn-
VOICES OF THE BROOKSIDE 185
pouts at any season, but these little chaps are
peculiar to the dog days. I have an idea they
hibernate in the mud at bottom until warm
weather calls them forth, and that by next spring,
so voracious is their appetite and such their agil-
ity in satisfying it, they are as big as the others of
their kind. So eager are these gourmands for
bait that if but one is in a pool you may c-atch
him, throw him back and catch him again times
without number, provided the hook does not hap-
pen to injure his tough jaw. '
Such a glimpse of the submarine life of the
brook the muskrat has given me with the musky
odor of his passing. After a little all is quiet
down there and I have a chance to admire the
life which flits above the surface. The hawking
dragonflies weave gossamer fabrics of dreams in
their unending flight to and fro and the lull of
the forest symphony bids one yield to these as
the waning afternoon builds up its shadows from
all hollows and glens. In the open pastures the
heat still quivers, but here the woodland deities
are building night, block on block, for the cooling
and soothing of the world. The heliographing
ceases. The foam writing blurs in the shadows.
Down long aisles of perfumed green the voice of
i86 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
the wood thrush rings mellow and serene. Here
is a woodland chorister who sings of peace and
calls to holy thoughts, voicing the evening prayer
of the woodland world. As his angelus rings
out I fancy all wild heads bowed in adoration.
Certainly the wood thrush's call touches that
chord in the human breast. To listen to it with
open heart is to know all things are for good and
that a peace from mystic spaces far above the
woodland is descending upon it. Heard through
this song the tone of the brook's voice changes
and instead of swift-syllabled gossip I seem to
hear it softly crooning a hymn.
CHAPTER XV
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER
"The Fourth of July is past; the summer is
gone," says a New England proverb. In this as
in many a quaint saying of our weather-wise, hill-
tramping ancestors, there is more than a half
truth hidden in what seems a humorous distor-
tion. In mid-August we look about us and know
this, for we see ourselves slipping more and more
rapidly dowii the long slope that leads from flow-
er-crowne-d hilltop to frozen lake. Some day a
snowstorm will get under the runners and the
balance of the descent will be but a single shish.
Meanwhile we may note the passage by certain
landmarks. In the seven weeks that come be-
tween the longest day and the fifteenth of Au-
gust, thunderstorms may bring local relief to the
parched earth, but otherwise it is our dry season,
and by the first week in August the farmers are
holding their hands to heaven in vain prayers for
rain, vowing that never was so dry a time and
that if the seasons thus continue to change Mas-
sachusetts will be a desert.
187
i88 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Always during August Jupiter Pluvius is wont
to change all this. He sends us not showers,
but a rain that wets us for a day and a night and
perhaps longer, and, however greedily the
parched earth may suck it up, finally irrigates all
the waste places and covers all the sore earth
with a soothing, healing salve of mud. Such
rains come in to us riding on the broad back of
the east wind, as rode the prince in Andersen's
fairy tale, and as the big drops fall upon us we
catch intoxicating scents borne to us from far
Cathay. On the east wind's back the prince rode
into paradise itself, which still lies hidden be-
neath hills to the eastward of the Himalayas.
We should not blame him for kissing the fairy
princess and being banished, for if he had not
done so he had not brought back the tale and
we should not know w'hence came the soothing
odors that drip with the rain from the wings of
the east wind. Fragrance of spice and of flow-
ers, bloom of ripe fruit, of grape and fig and
pom-egranate and quaint odor of olive, scents that
have ripened long in the purple dusk of paradise,
the east wind caught in his garments and bore
back to the cold forests of Northern Germany
that night that the prince rode with him. Nor
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER 189
has he since lost them altogether in crossing the
storm-tossed Atlantic to our shores. Instead the
rich vigor of the brine subtends them and bears
them, tanged with salt, to our deeper delectation.
In long carriage they have lost potency, one needs
keen scent to find them, but all the subtle essence
of dreams is in them still, and as the rain brings
down early twilight you know that the prince
saw true.
So likely is this storm to come to us in mid-
August that the Old Farmer's Almanack, less
oracularly and more bluntly by far than in
its usual weather predictions, bids us look
for it each year. Not only does its yearly re-
currence make it a landmark of the passing of
seasons, but the cold northwest breeze which al-
most invariably follows it, sucked in from Sas-
katchewan, breathing of snow flurries on the
frost-touched tundra- of the Arctic barrens, car-
ries a threat of winter that all the world knows.
The summer is over, it says to outdoor creatures,
and it is time to put in fall stores. It is time to
hurry all plans that need warm weather for their
completion. Particularly do the late summer
and early autumn blooming plants heed this.
Monday saw my favorite meadow dallying still
190 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
with the languor of midsummer. Even the
tender pink orchid blooms of arethusa lingered
among the gr'asses, in shadowy, cool-rooted spots,
though the arethusa begins to bloom there in late
May. Hardly have hardback and meadow-
sweet, which are mid-summer plants, reached the
fulness 'of mature bloom, so softly does the spring
linger in this sheltered spot, so gently does the
summer press her fervor on spring-watered
sphagnum.
Crowding up among these have come green
sprigs from perennial roots which are to bear on
their tops yellow heads of goldenrod and loose
panicles of purple asters. Yet on the day before
the rain hardly had the green of the goldenrod
tips become sun-glinted with yellow, scarcely an
aster had lifted long lashes far enough so that
you could see the iris beneath. After the rain
the heads which had drooped so low in rev-
erence before it rose in the clear sun and the
whole meadow was cloth of gold where before it
had been olive green with ripe grass tips, while
all among the gold the blue asters came out like
stars on a frosty evening, pricking through the
pale glow of sunset. The meadow has lacked
vivid color masses since June. Now it is a veri-
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER 191
table mixing pot for the autumn colors to come,
yellow with goldenrod., blue with asters, purple
with Joe-Pye weed, rosy because of the hard-
hack, and rimmed with delicate gray-white of
thoroughwort. These colors it will hold until
the maples take fire and the green of birches pales
to softest yellow at the expectation of October.
So the flash of coolness in the air after rain set
all the woodfolk busy. The squirrels seemed to
scold more shrilly and dance along the boughs
inspecting the swelling chestnut burrs with a
livelier kick than before. About this time, too,
the bluejays begin to be prophetic of autumn.
Hardly through July and early August has a loud
note been heard from these birds. Often the re-
cesses of the pines have been full of a gentle
tinkling whicker as of muted tin pans that prac-
tised in the hope of some day becoming real
phonographs, voices of young and old bluejays
holding family councils interspersed with quiet
joviality, but there has been none of the strident
clamor which is the autumn voice of the bird.
Today, however, in the cool, refreshing breeze
out of the northwest it rang through the wood
with familiar vigor, a herald, blowing trumpets
in advance of autumn. It is really all settled;
192 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
the bluejay has announced it and summer is over.
As the rain brings down early twilight it
brings not only dreams of faint odors of far
Cathay, it brings also clinging in the gray gar-
ments of the east wind films of its mystery and
romance.. As the prince in his brief outlook
through the window of paradise saw on the panes
moving pictures of life which Time had set there,
so through the dusk of the fields and into the
tangle of the forest it is easy to see this wind
from far Cathay moving pictures of Oriental
magic and mystery. Gray djinns stalk across the
open spaces in the gathering dusk and what ma-
gician from Samarcand or what prince or prin-
cess of India may float to earth on these billow-
ing praying-carpets of rain gusts it is impossible
to tell. In the open fields and on the forest edges
the effect of ghostly mystery is enhanced by the
strange personality which all things take on.
The most familiar path becomes new to us and
each shrub and stump stands forth, pressing upon
our attention, a newly arrived being out of the
realms of space.
Monday afternoon when there was just the
promise of rain in the air the pine woods were so
friendly a place that all the birds flocked in and
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER 193
seemed to be full of soft and gentle jubilation be-
cause of this promise. The spaces that have
been so quiet of late were full of feathers as
they had been in June. Here were robins in-
numerable, flitting jerkily about and crying "tut,
tut" in a subdued and genial way that was pos-
itively ladylike. Partridge woodpeckers flocked
in, drolly jollying each other and making much
talk, sotto voce. Not one of them cried aloud
and though in their humorous antics more than
one cried, "flicker, flicker, flicker," there was in it
none of the usual horse-laugh tone of the high-
hole when he is on a rampage. It was reduced
to a gentle whinny that seemed to vie with the
boudoir-built notes of the robins. Bluejays were
there too, but there was no clamor, just a gentle
murmur of subdued tones in the soft, resin-
scented twilight.
In the twilight of twenty-four hours after,
all my wood-rimmed world of pasture and
meadow was filled with the eerie presence of the
rain. It was not like a gentle shower of summer
when the patter of falling drops is like a tinkle of
fairy music and showers spell laughter. The
coming of a local shower at nightfall is as gentle
and seems as homelike as the gathering of the
194 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
birds in the grove. In this east storm brought
from far spaces on the wings of the east wind
there was something of wild unrest. The cool,
salt flavor of the air spoke of wild stretches of
the North Atlantic where sea-fogs have touched
the eerie loneliness of Greenland bergs and
passed it on to the wind. In this ghostly dusk
of driving mist the smear of the rain across the
face is like a touch of phantom hands coming out
of unfathomed spaces, gentle but uncanny. All
the soft perfumes of wood and field seem beaten
to the ground by this rain which brings with its
salt tang faint breathings of some distant
spiciness.
The gray light of the lower spaces goes up into
the clouds and in the dusk below shadowless
shrubs take on strange shapes. The pasture
edge is familiar no longer. Gray groups grow
where surely was but clear space and all across
the long meadow and up the slope mist horizons
jostle one another one moment and are blotted
out the next. The road entrance to the wood
is a black cavern out of which lean grotesque
goblins that wave a disquieting welcome. Here
to the right and left as I enter stand black figures
where in daylight I am sure nothing stood, nor
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER 195
does it help to lay the hand on them and know
they are stumps. It is damp and draughty as it
was in the cavern where the prince first found the
east wind, and I look about half expecting to see
the strong old woman who tended the fire and put
the winds in bags when they did not behave.
There she stands in the dusk nearby and only
by putting my hand on the prickly needles and
the rough trunk do I recognize a familiar pitch
pine. The trees near this entrance to the en-
chanted wood sigh as the east wind touches them,
seeming to draw deep breaths as living creatures
might and thus add verisimilitude to the terror
that stands on either hand to reach for me.
Thus ancient hermits depicted the soul on the
walls of their caverns, a shrinking shape that fled
among goblins that clutched at it from all sides.
The primal instinct of fear of things half seen
still lurks in each man's bones. On a pitch dark
night I had made the entrance to the wood with-
out thought of ghosts. It is the half known that
frightens us.
Once within the wood in the deepening dusk
I seemed to leave the bogies behind. Not fai
through the pines the path brought me to a half
cleared hollow where three-year sprouts mingle
196 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
their lush aspirations with scattered growth
seeded half a century ago. A lone deer seems to
make this spot a sanctuary. Often in daylight
we meet here almost face to face and look at one
another curiously, neither much afraid. In the
deepening darkness, just freed from the primal
terrors of the wood edge, I seemed to know why
the deer finds the place a refuge. Here in the
little sheltered hollow no goblins gibbered, no
banshee wailed in the wet wood. Instead the
sprout clumps seemed to rustle cheery assurance
and the taller trees to bend in cozy friendliness
over them. The soft fingers of the rain had a
soothing touch and wind and darkness were
kindly. I do not know why some spots in the
woods seem thus to shelter and protect whether
by night or day while others repel or fill with
distrust, but I know it is so. On a wood-
cock haunted slope or in a thicket beloved
of ruffed grouse I almost always feel as if my
camp had been pitched in some previous existence
and I had just got home again, though the place,
perhaps, ought to be new to me. I fancy the
deer feels that way and I hope he was snuggled
down in the shelter of some of those big-leaved
sprouts, warm and dry, as I passed by.
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER 197
Down the glade and along the swamp edge I
passed with the night falling fast. Twilight
lingers long in our latitude and the gray sky-
still lighted the path dimly, though the woods
were black on either side. The tranquillity of
the home-like hollow was with me yet, but I was
in for another panic shudder. A fitful gleam of
pale light showed just ahead of me through the
black thicket and I rounded a familiar curve in
the path to stand face to face with a most por-
tentous presence. A veritable ghost stood just
within the wood, seven feet tall, stretching out a
rattling bone of an arm and glowing from shape-
less head to formless foot with pale gleaming gar-
ments of bluish white.
More years ago than I like to count up there
used to come to my town an old man with a
magic lantern. He would hire the audience
room in the ancient town hall for an evening,
hang up a sheet, charge ten cents admission and
show to a crowd of wondering and delighted
urchins pictures wonderful, humorous and start-
ling. He always wound up with one for which
he apologized, then showed it with much gusto,
saying that he did not believe in such things him-
self, but that some people liked to see them.
198 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
This was "death on the pale horse," and boys
used to band together and see one another home
through the darkness after looking at it. The
creature that pointed his fl^shless arm at me from
the thicket was not that of the old time magic
lantern exhibit, but it reminded me of that im-
mediately, probably because it struck the same
formless shudder through my bones. Yet it was
only for a moment. I had seen such phosphor-
escent ghosts before and I had but to step boldly
forward and give the stub a kick to send the
spectre flying in fragments that dropped like huge
glowworms in chunks to the sodden ground.
Often in a northeast rain after long drought a
rotten birch stump will thus glow with phos-
'phorescent fire producing a most formidable and
tradition-satisfying ghost.
There is nothing to be feared in a phosphor-
escent birch stub, even with the drip of rain from
the leaves making stealthy, ghostly footfalls all
through the wood and the voice of the east wind
in the trees overhead beginning to take up a
querulous, wordless complaint that moved back
and forth with the footfalls. Foxfire is a com-
mon enough phenomenon. It is easy to explain
it all as I do now. The strange part of such
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER 199
things is always that, at the time, no matter what
a man's training and experience, he feels creep-
ing back and forth in his bones the old, pale
terror of primitive man in the presence of such
things. Science has veneered ns with knowledge
of phosphorus and the chemic action of fungi and
the effects of darkness and of light, but a half
hour's tramp into the wet woods while a north-
easter blows through the darkness takes all the
gloss off that. We may go boldly on our way
with undiminished front, but something always
stirs uneasily within us and looks out at the back
of the neck to see if that scattered glow has not
reassembled and followed us.
Soon the path led me up out of the swamp, the
sooner perhaps for the glowing eyes of foxfire
now far behind, and I caught the beckoning
gleam of electric light through the quiver of the
rain. From the brow of cemetery hill the coun-
try below rose from velvety blackness of com-
plete night to a gray sky that was somehow com-
forting and friendly. Through it, far down the
road toward Blue Hill, the street lamps glowed
yellow through the gloom, showing the route to
the invisible hill. The wind crooned in the pines,
and the swish of sheeted rain seemed a lullaby.
200 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Here again, like the deer-frequented hollow, was
a homelike and friendly spot. Even when I
faced the street I found nothing disquieting in
the sudden gleams of reflected light on the wet
headstones. These should have been far more
terrifying than any foxfire. Recent traditions
of the race make the cemetery a place of ghosts,
and here within its bounds were gnome lights that
sprang into being, flared brightly for a second,
then flashed out of sight as I walked. The long
row of lights seemed to give almost every stone
its turn, and the dancing gnome lanterns flared
and vanished behind and before. As I neared
the street puddles in the path caught up the
flashes fitfully till all the quiet acre of the dead
seemed full of goblins bobbing up from below
with lanterns, taking a hasty look about, then
pulling the lid down upon themselves with an un-
heard slam. It should have been disquieting, but
it was not. We easily discount the petty super-
stitions that tradition and the frills of literature
have made for us. That that grows out of the
foxfire in the swamp has its roots too far back
in the inheritance of the race to be discounted.
The cemetery ghosts made only a friendly illumi-
nation for the last stages of a pleasant trip.
CHAPTER XVI
JOTHAM STORIES
Almost daily in our hottest season the east
wind brings coolness and refreshment to the
dwellers at the sea beach. Nor does it stop at
the seacoast. Often hills a dozen miles inland
feel its cool caress.
The inland, simmering beneath the sun, with
the thermometer in the eighties or worse, sends
heavenward great columns of heated air. To
take the place of this the lower strata draws in
from the sea, filled with the coolness and sparkle
of the brine and informed with that mysterious
tonic which seems born of wind-tossed salt water.
At such times the east wind brings the breath
of life to our nostrils and sets the jaded motor
centres of our nerves atingle with new power.
Often we dwellers far inland get more than a
cool breath of the sea. Then for a day or two a
northeaster comes pelting over the seaward range
of hills, murking the sky with dun clouds, whin-
ing about the eaves and roaring down the chim-
201
202 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
ney, bringing deluges of rain to the heat-browned
pastures and draping them in obscurity of gray
mists, blotting out the roar of cities and the flurry
of modern life, making us belileve for a little that
we are children of the farm once more. On
sunny days we do not quite get this. Even in
the east wind we smell the soot as well as the sea,
but the genuine northeaster shuts all that out.
On such days the work of the farm ceases.
What hay is out is cocked and capped, snugged
down to wait for fair weather. The weeds in the
graden drink and drink again and forget the hoe
which idles in the tool-house corner, and Jotham
putters about the barn, making pretence of in-
door work but really luxuriating in idleness.
The place is redolent of the rich, sweet odor of
the new hay and mingled with this comes that
salt tang of the east wind bearing scent also of
all the hills and pastures over which it has blown.
You may if you will tell what gust touched the
elders in white bloom down by the brook, which
one lingered in the swamp a moment to caress the
azaleas, and which stopped only long enough to
snatch a kiss from the sweet fern on the pasture
hill-top.
JOTHAM STORIES 203
It is pleasant then to sit sheltered from the
rain just within the wide barn doors, to hear the
twittering of the swallows as they comfort their
young on the beams, and to listen to the wind
and to Jotham. The old-time New England
farm hand — he who wore the smock frock as
did his master while they both worked about the
barn and then, the chores done, stood for half an
hour in the dusk, either side of the barn door
like caryatids, drinking in the pleasures of rest in
the twilight — has passed, but Jotham remains.
He has told the tales of his grandfather's ex-
ploits as a hunter so many times that he not only
believes them himself but is equally sure that
everyone else believes them.
Yet Jotham is in the main taciturn. It is only
when the northeaster soughs in the eaves and
brings him leisure that he drops into narrative.
His tales are grotesque fancies, simple yarns
withal, such as fluttered from the homely life of
pasture and woodland in early days of enforced
idleness to light on the threshing floor of some
great old barn, or to warm themselves at the big
kitchen fireplace on winter nights when the wind
guffawed down the throat of the big chimney and
204 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
sprinkled the hearth with an attic salt of snow
for the seasoning of them for the country palate.
I do not doubt Jotham's grandfather told them of
his grandfather and that they belong to neither
but are local folk lore, pasture sagas, changelings
born of the queer union of east wind and blue-
berry blooms, brought up by hand — farm hand.
"My grandfather," says Jotham, "was a great
hunter. On stormy days like this he would take
down his old long, singlebarrelled gun and go out
and bring home all kinds of game, mostly ducks
and geese. In his day the ducks and geese bred
around here and you could get 'em any time, but
the best shooting was in the early fall on a north-
easter. The heavy waves down on the coast
drive the birds out of their feeding grounds and
they come up to the fresh-water ponds inland to
drink and get a change of feed. It is the same
way with the shore birds, yellow-legs and plover
and the like, though in my grandfather's day they
didn't care much about such small game. Bigger
birds were plenty enough. Grandfather used to
hate yellow-legs, though, for they are telltales.
"Once he went over to Muddy Pond loaded
for duck. It is a great place for ducks. In
THE NEV/ YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR. LENOX
riLDEN fC'Jr>DATIONS
JOTHAM STORIES 205
those days they used to come in there and some-
times pack it solid full. You could hardly see
the pond for the ducks in it. Grandfather al-
ways kne^v just the right day to go, and this time
when 'he looked down on the pond from the hill
he saw hardly any water at all, nothing much
but ducks. It was the chance of his life. He
slipped down the hill among the scrubs to the
cedars and then began to creep carefully up.
You know what the pond is like, perfectly round
and only a couple of acres or so, wath a rim of
marsh and then another big rim of swam.p
cedars, then the hills all about, neither inlet nor
outlet; a queer pond anyway and queer things
happen on it, same as they did that day. Grand-
father had got half way through the swamp
cedars when he came to a little opening which he
had to cross. Just then there came up on the
east wind a big flock of telltales, 762 of them,
whirling over the hills without a sound till they
saw him. Then they began to yelp."
"Look here, Jotham," I am always careful to
say at this point, ''How could he tell that there
were just y(i2 of them? He couldn't count so
many as they flew."
"Didn't have to count 'em as they flew,"
2o6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
answers Jotham. "He counted 'em after he had
shot 'em.
''Well, they began to yelp 'Look out for him!
Look out for him !' and the ducks knew what that
meant. All that great blanket of ducks uncov-
ered the pond with one motion. Grandfather
said it was just like a curtain rising straight up,
for they were all black ducks. There is no other
duck can go straight up in the air. Other ducks
slide oiT on a slant against the wind."
How Jotham manages to put the lonely quaver
of the yellow-leg's call into that phrase "Look
out for him ! Look out for him !" with its four-
note repetition is more than I know, but he al-
ways does, and you can see the big flock swing
through the mist as he says it.
"Grandfather was pretty mad to lose that
chance at good game and he made up his mind
that he'd take it out of the telltales, so he began
to whistle 'em back. He was a master hand at
any wild call and pretty soon he lit the flock.
There they were, a rim of yellow-legs all around
the pond, a perfect circle except in one place,
where some dogwood bushes made down to the
JOTHAM STORIES 207
water's edge. Then granddad had a great idea.
He saw his chance to kill every one of those
infernal telltales where they sat. He studied on
the size of that circle for a minute. Then he put
the lonsf barrel of that old o-un between two
o o
swamp cedar stumps and bent >on it carefully. He
kept doing this, looking at the circle, then bend-
ing the gun barrel till he had the gun bent just
on the curve of the circle of yellow-legs sitting
round the pond. Then he smiled for he knew
he had 'em. He crept carefully into the dogwood
bushes till he was in just the right place, took a
good aim round that circle, and then he onlatched
on 'em.
"Well, he'd figured that circle just right. The
shot swung round it and killed every one of them
seven hundred and sixty-two yellow-legs right
where they stood. But tarnation! He'd for-
gx)tten all about himself, he was so interested in
the science of it. The back of his neck was right
in that circle and the shot came round true as
could be and hit him right there. The force of
it was pretty well spent going so far and killing
so many yellow-legs, but it dented some bits of
dogwood leaves right into his system and he had
2o8 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
dogwood poisoning pretty bad. He used to have
it every year after that, about the time the first
northeaster set in."
Anybody who knows Muddy Pond will know
that Jotham's story ought to be true, for the pond
is there to prove it, just as he describes it.
"Of course," says Jotham at this point, "that
was skill. Not one hunter in a hundred would
have thought to bend his gun so as to throw the
shot in a circle or would have been able to esti-
mate the amount of the curve so exactly right.
Another thing happened to my grandfather over
at that pond that was part skill and part luck.
He was on his way home from partridge shooting
one day just before Thanksgiving. He found he
was out of shot just before he got to the pond.
His flask had leaked and let ever}^ bit of the shot
out, and when he came to load up after shooting
his last partridge he stopped with the powder, for
there was no shot to put in. Just then he came
in sight of the pond and there were seven geese
swimming round in it; and that the day before
Thanksgiving !
*Tt was a tough time to be without any shot,
but grandfather was equal to the emergency.
JOTHAM STORIES 209
He simply left his ramrod right in the gun, put on
a cap, and began to worm his way through the
cedars to the shore, where he could get a good,
close shot at the geese. Just as he did this an-
other hunter who was no kind of a shot, came to
the other side of the pond and saw the birds.
He was one of the kind that have the buck fever
at the sight of game, and he put up his gun and
shot slam at the flock, too far away to do any
execution, then he let out a yell and began to
run down to the shore as fast as he could go.
"Of course he scared the geese and they lit out,
swinging right by grandfather. Grandfather
was a nervy hunter. He held his fire till he got
the heads of those seven geese right in line, and
then he shot and strung 'em all right through the
eyes with the ramrod. Granddad couldn't quite
see where he had hit 'em, but when the smoke
cleared away he saw the seven geese still flying
and his ramrod going off with 'em, and he was
some considerable astonished and a good deal
put about at losing his ramrod.
"Now here's the queer part of it: Those
seven geese were blinded, of course, with a ram-
rod strung right through their eyes, but the life
2IO OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
in a wild goose is powerful strong and they kept
flying on just the same, until they went out of
sight, right in the direction of granddad's home.
But he got home and had hung up his gun with-
out seeing anything more of them and he thought
his ramrod was sure gone for good. Then
grandmother came to him, kind of scared, saying
she heard spirit rappings on the pantry w^all.
Granddad heard the noise, a sort of tapping, but
he couldn't see anything until he looked out the
pantry window.
"Yes, there they were seven of 'em, hung on
the ramrod and the ramrod hung on a blind-hook,
just outside Granddad's pantry window, their
wings still flapping a little and making that rap-
ping sound, just as if they w^ere knocking to be
let in at the pantry of the man that had shot
'em. All the relations used to come to grand-
father's for Thanksgiving, and thirty-five of 'em
sat down to dinner that year and every one of
'em had all the roast goose they could eat."
Frightened or injured game birds do perform
strange feats as many an honest huntsman will
tell you. I myself have a neighbor, no relative
of Jotham's, who shot at a partridge in the woods
a quaTter of a mile from his house and saw the
JOTHAM STORIES 211
bird fly away. When he got home a half-hour
later he found his pantry window broken and a
partridge lying dead on the pantry floor, either
the one he had shot at or another just as good —
and as the proverb has it, one story is good until
another one is told. Jotham usually caps his list
with the following:
*'I guess the greatest wild goose hunting
grandfather ever did was the time the big flock
got caught in the ice storm. It came in Novem-
ber, a foot of soft snow and then one of those
rainstorms that freeze as soon as the rain touches
anything. Every twig on the trees that storm
was as big as your wrist with ice and there was
an inch or two of clear ice on everything and
more coming all the time, when grandfather
heard a big flock of wild geese honking. They
didn't seem to be going over, but their voices
hung in the air right over the big steep hill from
the barn up into the back pasture. After they'd
been honking up there for some time grandfather
went up to see what it was all about, but he didn't
take his gun. As he climbed the hill through the
wet snow he heard 'em plainer and plainer, and
when he got to the top he saw a most 'strodinary
sight. There was a good-sized flock, ninety-
212 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
seven geese, to be exact, that had got so iced up
that they had to settle on the top of the hill.
"The ice had formed on their feathers as they
flew and they were so weighted down they
couldn't fly and they were getting more and more
iced up every minute. Granddad didn't care to
go back for his gun for fear some of the other
nimrods in the neighborhood would come on the
scene and bag the game first, but there wasn't any
need of a gun. All he had to do was to drive
'em home. They were terribly iced up, but their
legs were still free and he chased 'em about for
some time before he got 'em started down hill.
But once over the edge of the hill the weight of
ice on 'em turned 'em right over and over, and
so they rolled on down. It was a wet snow and
as they rolled they took up more and more of it
till by the time they came slap up against the
side of the barn every single goose was sealed up
in the middle of a hard, round snowball. They
all stopped there and all that grandfather had
to do was to pile them up, and there they were,
in cold storage for the winter. Every time the
family wanted roast goose they went out and
split open a snowball. The folks in granddad's
time used often to freeze their fresh meat and
JOTHAM STORIES 213
keep it but in the snow all winter, but he was the
only one that I ever heard of that stored wild
geese in that way."
There are worse tales and more of them, but
I fear that cold type chills out the subtle aroma
of probability with which Jotham always man-
ages to invest them. One needs to hear them
told with the fragrance of a barn full of new-
made hay in the nostrils, the sw'ish of the north-
easter to accompany the voice in his ears, and
with his eye on the distant hillside pastures all
hung with mysterious draperies of mist to make
a proper background of quaint shadows of ro-
mance. Then he can really appreciate the folk
lore that goes with us by the familiar title of
"Jotham stories."
CHAPTER XVII
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER
I think the daintiest scent that can be found in
the woodland in these last days of September is
that of the coral-root flower, which looks like a
wan, tan ghost of a blossom, but nevertheless is
sweet and succulent. The plant is by no means
common in my world. Many a year goes by
without my seeing it at all. In autumn it grows
from among dry pine leaves, a slender spike that
has neither root leaves nor stem leaves, but looks
like the dried flower scape of some spring bloom-
ing plant. So protective is its coloration that I
stand among its blooms and look long before I see
them at all. It is only by getting very close that
one can see that the tiny forests scattered along
the pale brown scape are themselves beautifully
colored with purple and white on the same soft
tan foundation as the scape. They have, too, the
quaintly mysterious formation of all orchid
blooms and that alluring, elusive odor which
must be sought intimately to be known. You
214
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 215
must get this dainty perfume where it grows.
If you pluck the blooms and take them home
they will hold their beauty and color for days,
but the scent will have strangely slipped from
them and trembled along the still, soft air back to
the woodland haunts whence it came. You
might find it there, wandering disconsolate in the
lonely brown spaces seeking for its own heart
of bloom, but from under your roof it has de-
parted.
The flower is a strange one, anyway, in all its
growth. Fibrous roots it has none, just a bunch
of coral-like tubercles which draw nourishment
by their own subtle processes from the roots of
trees that shade them. Leaves it has none, just
a scarious brown bract that encloses a part of the
stem. Living upon canned food, so to speak, it
has lost its ability to win sustenance from earth
and air. It seems to live, not upon the sap of
these trees, but upon the dead roots and decayed
wood, a specially prepared humus without which
it may not thrive, even in its own limited, elusive
way. Among our wild flowers doomed to ulti-
mate extinction I fancy this will be one of the first
to disappear. In the days of great stretches of
moist, deep woodland it may well have flourished.
2i6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
In my town it is rare and any year I may find it
for the last time. On many counts I would not
miss it, and yet that faint, refined odor which
somehow always reminds me of ghosts of mi-
gnonette, of tender, almost forgotten memories
once more stirred, gives a gentle melancholy to
the woodland that all the glories of October will
not be able to assuage.
It is by such subtle hints as this that autumn
announces her presence among us. The prevail-
ing tone of the upland wood is yet that of sum-
mer. Hardly will you see a splash of color in all
the miles of green. It is in shady woods where
no frost has yet penetrated, spots like that in
which the coral-root is sheltered and befriended
that nevertheless you read the open tale of what
is to come. In low-lying open meadows the frost
has spoken. In these on one night the chill of
frozen space weighed down and turned the dew
to ice and wrecked some tender herbage, leaving
it brown as if touched by fire instead of frost.
But it is only here and there in places peculiarly
subject to this warning that this has happened.
In shielding forest depths the coverlets of mul-
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 217
tiple green leaves have kept the tender things of
the wood wrapped warm through the nights and
the frost has said no word. Yet there too the
messiage has penetrated, by what means I cannot
say. The ferns have heard it and have turned
pale. The tender, slender fronds of the hay-
scented Dicksonia are very wan and the odor
from them now as you tramp through is not so
much that of new-mown hay, as it was in June,
but rather that of the stack or the mow, always
with their own inimitable woodsy flavor added.
The brake whose woody stems have held its ter-
nate, palm-like fronds bravely aloft all summer
is now a sallow yellow, and the lovely Osmundas
and stately Struthiopteris are bowing their heads
in brown acquiescence with the inevitable. I
doubt if it is a message from the air. It is rather
a command from the nerve centres at the base
of the stalk, a message from the brain of the
heart-roots that gives the fronds warning that
their day is over. If it were in the air the poly-
podys, the Christmas ferns and the spinulose
wood ferns would have lost their color also. It
is different with these. There is a hardier qual-
ity in their nature and they seem to revel in the
2i8 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
killing frosts of late autumn and the ice and snow
of winter ; I find them as green and as hearty in
December as I do now.
Next to the tender ferns it is the woody un-
dergrowth that recognizes the season first.
Long ago some limb of a red maple growing in
the shade has been seen to flare up with a sudden
flame while else all the wood was green. But
this in itself is no sign. This happens here and
there in low ground even in very early summer.
Now, however, it is not only here and there but
everywhere that you will find this occasional limb
adding scarlet beauty to the sombre shade of the
deep wood, and as your glance passes from the
cool pale ferns to this it slips on and finds color
growing on many things in the woodland shadow.
Here is the cornel, whose lovely blooms filled the
forest with butterfly beauty, it seems no longer
ago than yesterday. Today I find the cornel foli-
age green still as to midrib and veining, but with
the woof of the leaf gone such a fine apple red
that it is surely good enough to eat. If color
counts the deer should find rich browse in the
shrubbery these days. The hazels that were so
green are suddenly a ripe brown that is all warm
with red tones, and where the summac grows
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 219
there Is forest fire without smoke burning in the
scarlet flame-tongues of the pointed leaflets of
this modern burning bush. And all this is be-
neath the shelter of the still green forest into
which we must go to find it. From without the
full green of summer ripeness prevails, and we
must seek other signs of the autumn season.
But must we, after all? Yesterday or the day
before it was true and we were saying that the
summer held on well. Today, so suddenly does
the change seem to become visible, I saw them
blaze up out of a cool swamp at the foot of the
hill on which I stood. The smoke of autumn's
peace pipe was blue on all the distant hills, and
he must have dropped his match in my swamp,
where it smouldered and flared and caught the
maple even as I looked in the full expectancy of
seeing nothing but green. The red fire of greet-
ing seemed to run from tree to tree, and all the
lowlands for a mile were ablaze, as if some sub-
dominant political party had won an unexpected
victory and could not wait for night to light its
fires of celebration. All the little swamp maples
were red with this fire, and though I suppose they
have been days in turning the efifect was that of
their flashing up as I looked. Then I saw that
220 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
the birches among them were all set with candles,
whose pale yellow flames lighted them with a
most chaste fire, just as in the old days of torch-
light enthusiasm over political campaigns we used
to put rows of them in the windows on the night
that the parade was to pass. Seeing all that I
felt as if autumn were again triumphantly
elected, and we all ought to take off our hats and
"give three cheers for the illumination on the
right."
Surely autumn is the finest season of the year.
I always know that as soon as it gets here. Yes-
terday I revelled in the summer that had stayed
with us so long and still seemed to show few
signs of going. Toda}^ the fall coloring is burn-
ing, like a wood fire on a still day, slowly up
from the swamps into the upland woods. Now
that I have begun to notice it I see that the color-
ing is touching the underleaves of the hillside
birches, those nearest the stem, and that perhaps
one in five has the same cool, pale yellow fire
alight. Thus rapidly does the conflagration
spread from swamp to hillside, from the shade of
the grove to its topmost boughs and before we
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 221
know it the year will have once more set the
world on fire.
As for those other signs, there is a whole cal-
endar of bird voices and bird movements that
might well give us the dates, day by day. To
me the first warning of the passing of summer
comes in the tin-trumpet notes of the blue jays.
While the nesting season is on the blue jay is as
dumb as an oyster. The woods may be full of
him and his tribe, but never an old bird says a
word. After the young can fly you may hear
them if you slip quietly along in the pine woods.
You have to be pretty near though, to do it.
They sit in a family group in the treetops and
complain, under the breath, hungrily. It is not
until the young are well grown, the moulting sea-
son is over and the summer pretty nearly the
same that any blue jay gets his voice. Then, al-
most as suddenly as the coming of autumn color-
ing in the trees the racket begins. You may not
have seen a blue jay in the woods for months.
Suddenly they appear in flocks, swooping down
on the orchard in brand new uniforms of con-
spicuous blue, white and black, yelling tooting
and chattering. They have been shy and care-
222 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
ful. They are now tame and reckless. They
troop into the pasture after the wild cherries
which they eat with chattering and scolding. On
vibrant limbs they give spirit rappings in imita-
tion of a woodpecker. Then they laugh and
scream about it. Hearing them we always say,
''How fallish it sounds."
The blue jay has not only a whole vocabulary
of his own, both in conversation, from twittering
to oratory, and in calls from assembly cries and
notes of warning to screams of derision and de-
fiance, but he is an imitator in certain lines. He
will imitate the red-shouldered hawk and the
sparrow hawk and I suspect him of mixing it in
conversation with the flicker. Often at this time
of year I hear a subdued, rather sweet-voiced
murmur in the wood as if a ladies' sewing so-
ciety was just beginning to get busy pulling out
the bastings. I know very well it is a convention
composed of blue jays or flickers, but it is not so
easy to tell which until I slip up and surprise
them at it. The subdued tones of both birds in
such conventions assembled are very much alike
and I suspect that their polite conversation is
in a common language. But I never can prove
this, for they do not fraternize. The convention
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 223
is sure to be of one feather or the other. They
do not flock together. That is no doubt just as
well, for I have great respect for the flicker. He
is a whimsical old codger, very prone to talk to
himself and go through strange gymnastics in a
rather ridiculous way, but the flicker is honest.
He brings up a large family in the strictest
probity and I have never known a flicker to do a
wrong thing. On the other hand, the blue jay
is a thief, a mocker and a murderer. Just now
he is living honestly on nuts and wild fruit, tak-
ing almost as many acorns as the squirrels and
making a geat deal of talk about it. You would
think him the most open-hearted chap in the
world, but if you will watch him carefully in the
spring you will learn things which are to his dis-
advantage. You will likely find him taking a
raw egg or two with his breakfast, to the sorrow
of some small bird. Later, the fledglings are not
safe from him, and if you shake a blue jay up in
a bag with a crow and then open the bag, two ar-
rant rogues will fly out, and it is hard telling
which will have the other's tail feathers. For all
that, I rather like the blue jay. If we are going
strictly to condemn all who have a liking for an
occasional small hot bird, there will be but few
224 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
of us left. At this season he is the town crier
of the wood, clanging his bell loudly at every
wood-road corner and announcing in strident
monotones that straw hats are called in and there
is an exhibition sale of fall garments at Wood &
Field's.
Even in August we get the first spray on the
great wave of southward migrating warblers,
and all through early September the woods are
again full of their slender, flitting forms and
their gentle voices. If you know your locality
well you may mark the very dates of the month
by their coming and going. So with equal defi-
niteness the earlier departing of our summer res-
idents leaves gaps in our hearts and the wood-
land on pretty definite September days. The
cry-baby young of the orioles have hardly ceased
to complain about the house, making the mid-
summer peevish, before the birds are flocking.
They take August off the calendar with them.
On the date that I miss them and the kingbirds
September first is very near if not among those
present. The redwing blackbird may linger a
day or two after these, but he does not wait to any
more than see September arrive before he, too,
is off. The bobolinks, perfectly unrecognizable
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 225
in plain brawn coats, continue to flock sparrow-
wise about the meadows until say, the tenth.
Then they go chink-chinking down the marshes
southward by way of Florida to Central America.
Yucatan and the delta of the Orinoco may be
lonely places in summer, but I do not think one
need to be homesick there in mid-winter with all
these intimate friends sitting about on the palm
trees and chatting about the way things went in
my meadows and woods a few months before.
As our summer residents go and the passing
migrants arrive and depart we may begin to ex-
pect the winter visitants. I am looking for
myrtle warblers now. Their usual date of ar-
rival is the twentieth, and if I do not find them
here it is probably my fault. The pastures are
blue now with bayberries, which seem to be their
favorite food. Feeding on these the myrtle
warblers should be spicy, sprightly creatures, full
of quaint romance, as indeed they are. The
junco may come as early as this, according to the
best authorities, though I confess I never have
any luck in finding him much before November.
The junco is a snowbird, anyway, his colors
match leaden skies, and he seems to me out of
place without a fellow flock of snow flakes.
226 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
The golden crowned kinglet and the winter
wren, the white-throated sparrow and the brown
creeper, all may be looked for between the 20th
of September and the passing of the month,
though as for the brown creeper those two ardent
bird students, Frederic H. Kennard and Fred
McKechnie have demonstrated that it is not a
winter visitant only but an occasional all-the-
year resident, they having found nests and eggs
in the Ponkapoag swamp. So the list might be
enlarged vastly till we found a new comer or a
new goer or both for every day in this month
of transition, September.
To me, though, the most potent signs of the
presence of autumn are neither the migrants nor
the changing foliage. They are the mysterious
voices of the woodland which change at about
this time often to an eerier and lonelier note.
The voice of late September winds in the trees
has a wild call of melancholy in it. There is a
spot in my wood where an ancient pine, dead and
stark long ago, lies in the arms of a sturdy scarlet
oak. All summer the leaning trunk has shed
bark and small limbs, silently, patiently waiting,
final dissolution. With the coming of cool au-
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER 227
tumn winds it has begun to complain. On rainy
days especially I have heard this low lonesome
voice crying softly to itself through the dusk and
been at a loss to know what creature made it.
Foxes in the mating season along about St. Val-
entine's day make strange outcry in the wood,
but at this time of year the fox if he speaks at all
simply barks. A raccoon might whimper thus
but there were some cries that no coon ever made.
Once I stalked it for a lost child and I was long
in locating the exact spot whence it came. After
all it was only the complaining of the old tree
as it rubbed on its support in the swaying wind,
but it voiced all the loneliness of the good-byes
which a thousand bright creatures have been say-
ing to the wood these pleasant September days.
CHAPTER XVIII
MYSTICAL PASTURES
Two century-old pasture pines shelter my fav-
orite sleeping spot in the pasture, and croon sol-
emn, mystical tunes all night long. If I could but,
with my dull ear grown finer, some day learn to
interpret these I might grow wise with the yet
unfathomed wisdom of the universe. Their
runes are not of the gentle, vivid life that thrills
below them. Before the little creatures of the
pasture world were created, before pines grew
upon earth, the words they sing were set to the
sagas of vast space, rhythmic runes of unremem-
bered ages taught by the great winds of the world
to these patriarchs that seem to tell them over
and over lest they forget. They tower virid and
virile. They stretch wide arms over the pasture
people in benediction and sheltering love, but they
are not of them. The reading of the deep riddle
of the universe has made them prophets and seers
and they dwell alone in their dignity. I may
make my home beneath their sheltering shade,
228
MYSTICAL PASTURES 229
caress their rugged gray trunks and fall asleep to
the mystical murmur of their voices, but I can
never be intimate with them.
There is nothing of this aloofness about the
other pasture people. The younger pines do not
whisper solemn riddles, but are gently friendly
without mystery, and so are many of the myriad
creatures that crowd the spaces boldly or dwell
quietly in unsuspected seclusion. Of all the out-
door world the pasture is the most friendly place,
yet it is not obtrusively so and you must dwell in it
long before you know many of even your elbow
neighbors by sight. If you know them very well
you will be able to detect their nearness by sound,
oftentimes, long before sight of them is vouch-
safed you. When they do appear it is usually a
sort of embodiment. They materialize as if out
of thin air and disintegrate by the same route.
This is not because they fear you. It is simply
because it has been the habit of pasture people
for untold generations.
Thus it is that a lovely white moth flits often
in the veriest gray of dawn just to the eastward
of where I lie. It always seems as if he were a
condensation out of the white mists that are born
in that darkest hour when the night winds cease
230 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
and that runic rhyme of the pines is lulled for a
time. He seems as transparent as they and is
nothing but the ghost of a moth as he passes from
one head of goldenrod bloom to another. Some
mornings he vanishes in the amber glow that
ushers in the daylight and then I think I have
merely been dreaming of lepidoptera. This
morning he did not appear, either in the early
gray or the amber glow, and I went out to look
for him. The waning moon hung wan and white
in the west, a white paper ghost of a moon that
had no light left in her. All the east had the
clear translucent yellow radiance of the yellow
birch leaves, a cool, pale gold, and between lay
dead the morning mists, chilled to white frost on
all the pasture shrubs and the level reaches of
brown grass. Along the hedgerow of barberry,
wild cherry, raspberry, hardback, meadow sweet,
sweet fern and goldenrod that deck the ancient
wall I looked for the white radiance of my moth's
wings in vain, and I pictured him as dead among
the frozen grasses, and mourned him thus.
The day grew with all the wonderful still
radiance which so often follows a frosty morn-
ing in October. The pine trees could not sing;
MYSTICAL PASTURES 231
there was no wind to give them voice. The still
flood of golden sunshine warmed to the marrow,
yet did not wilt as in summer. Instead, it in-
formed all things with a glow like an elixir of
life. To feel it well within one's flesh is to have
a forecasting of immortality, to know that one is
to be born again and again. I did not wonder
that as I once more scanned the hedgerow along
the ancient wall I saw my white moth clamber
bravely up a goldenrod stem and begin a half-
scrambling, half-fluttering pilgrimage from one
to another of the hardy blooms that had survived
the frost as well as he. Most of the goldenrod
and meadow sweet blooms are well past their
prime and are showing gray with age and ripen-
ing pappus, but here and there you find belated
specimens that hold color and honey still, and
on these he paused to breakfast. Then, as his
wings rested for a moment, I could see that his
pure white was touched with tiny chain patterns
of black spots and I knew him for Cingalia cate-
naria, the chain-streak moth. Somehow I am
half-sorry to have found him out. I am not sure
but I would rather have remembered him as one
of the mystical fancies of the early dawn, some
pure white dream materialized out of the tenuous
232 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
mists by the incantations of the Druid pines.
Neighborly and simple as are all the pasture
people when we sit quiet long enough to see them
and gain their confidence by making them feel
that we are an integral portion of the place, as
they are, they all have something of the mys-
tical about them. There are four chipmunks,
sleek and beautiful striped children of a this
year's late litter. These frolic about on the
stones and among the bushes at my very feet.
They eat crusts almost from my hand. Yet they
might as well be mahatmas, for in their going and
coming they are as mysterious. I hear a scratch-
ing on a stone, and there sits a chipmunk. With
a swish he is gone, and unless I hear the skitter-
ing of tiny feet a rod away I may not tell in what
direction or how. Then, too, the skittering may
be that of some entirely different creature. I
prefer to think of them thus, as furry bogles that
bob up out of fairy tales and bob back again to
the making of a mythology that sniffs of sweet
fern and bayberry and has the flavor of bar-
berry sauce.
The tender glow of still October days seems
to fill the pasture with such mysteries as this.
Commonplace things are touched with the soften-
MYSTICAL PASTURES 233
ing haze of romance, and in the crystal stillness,
the happy aloofness of the place, the conscious-
ness goes groping for the unseen. It may be
that by digging and grubbing I might unearth the
veritable home of my chipmunks, trace their cun-
ning runways under stone and through fog and
brush and prove that there is nothing of the theo-
sophist about them. But not for worlds would
I do it, nor would I believe it if I found them.
Therein lies the inscrutability of faith.
In the golden morning glow the sounds of the
far and near world seem to come without inter-
ference from intervening space and the roar of
the steam whistle on the liner at sea, eighteen
miles away over rough hilltops, is as intimate as
the drumming of the partridge in the swamp,
scarcely more than a stone's throw away. In-
deed it is less aloof, far less mysterious. Its
raucous bellow is soothed to a deep musical tone
by distance. It speaks of the human touch and
the man-made whistle. I may measure, define,
place it ; know the steamer that it speaks for and
the man that pulls the throttle cord. I may find
the pitch, touch the identical note on guitar or
cornet. I have neither wind nor stringed instru-
234 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
ment that will record so low a note as that of the
drumming of the partridge. I count the vibra-
tions of the first of fit with ease. They speed up
toward the end, but they do not raise the pitch.
I know nothing in our human musical notation
that will touch its depth. Yet it is a musical
tone and a most goblinlike and eerie one. The
partridge may be commonplace enough and his
drumming but a strut of complacency and self-
satisfaction. With patience and good luck I may
see him doing it and follow him from his roost
in the morning till he returns to it at night. But
I cannot fathom the mystery which haunts the
pasture in the genial melancholy of these sunny
October days, to which his drum seems to sound
the marching note.
In the midday stillness when the blue sky
arches over the place like a crystal bell which
no winds may penetrate it seems as if the witch-
ery grew. The warmth of the sun is like that of
summer though without languor. The world is
in a breathless swoon in the midst of which I
wonder dreamily how this soft brown grass on
which I lie could have been crisp and white with
frost six hours ago. The morning waked all the
hardier forest creatures who seemed to revel in
MYSTICAL PASTURES 235
the crisp exhilarating air. Red and gray squir-
rels crashed about in the tree tops making noisy
merriment in their indescribable squirrel jargon.
Their thrashing and chattering in the trees was
almost equal to a crowd of schoolboys nutting.
With them the blue jays blew trumpets and
clanged bells, the woodpeckers drummed and
shrieked and crows and chewinks added to the
clamor. Even my chipmunks blew squeaky shrill
whistles in staccato notes. The pasture was full
of picnic.
The drowse of noon seemed to put them all to
sleep. The pond was like glass and the black
duck flock which had quacked noisily there at
daybreak and drawn white lines of ripples across
its black surface had gone south. Everywhere
was silence.
Everywhere silence, indeed, but it was the si-
lence only of the slumbering, deeper voiced deni-
zens. The swoon of heat in which they lay had
served to rouse other lives that the frost of the
morning had silenced. There are people who
never can hear a partridge drum. The vibra-
tions are pitched below the register of their ear.
There are others, far more in number who never
hear the shrilling of the pasture insects. Their
236 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
voices are so thin and shrill that they are above
the common register. Indeed they are apt to
pass the average person as unnoticed as the tick
of a clock in a room where one is accustomed to
its presence. I do not know how long they had
been at it, the black night chirping crickets which
now make up for frozen nights by singing all the
warm part of the day, the green day crickets
whose note is pitched far higher, and a dozen
other chirping, shrilling things that one never
sees and rarely hears, however numerous and in-
sistent their voices, unless something forces his
attention in that direction and bids him listen. I
think it was the zoon of a cicada which waked
my attention, and once I heard them they seemed
to fill the air with shrieking. If the drum of the
partridge is the lowest piched note of which the
pasture people are capable, surely the piping of
some of these tiny creatures is the highest. It
is very difficult to determine the spot w^hence
comes the pulsing of the partridge's wings. It
is born out of nowhere and reaches your ear from
no particular direction. The shrilling of the pas-
ture insects is everywhere and it is equally im-
possible to locate it. They are veritable spirit
voices, these, and fill the spaces among the red
MYSTICAL PASTURES 237
cedars and barberry bushes, the forests of sweet
fern and the fox paths that wind among the berry
bushes, with invisible fays and sprites. Only the
tiniest of these could have such shrill tenuous
voices. Having heard them in all their uproar
it is even then difficult to hold your attention on
them, more difficult than with any other pasture
or M^oodland creatures I know. There will be
times when the ear refuses them and it seems as
if blank silence had settled on the whole field,
then after a little it will all come pulsing back to
you.
How dependent these disembodied voices are
upon the sun is seen toward nightfall, when the
shadows beg^in to grow long. Where these fall
across the grasses there grow triangles of silence
which travd fast. Oftentimes as the point of
one of these progresses you may locate a chirper
by the sudden ceasing of his chirp and find him
in the tip of shadow, already numb. The black
crickets keep up their tune longest, singing from
beneath sheltering stones and bark or fallen
leaves. With the direct sun vanish also other
summer pasture people who have made the
warmth of the day beautiful. Under an old ap-
238 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
pie tree the ground is yellow with the apples that
it has shed and here all through the sunny hours
two Vanessa butterflies have alternately floated
and feasted, one a mourning cloak, the other a
Compton tortoise, Vanessa antiopa and Vanessa
j-album. These are late arrivals that have come
from the cocoon upon a cold world and are doing
their best to make good in it. Both are of a
species that are hardy beyond belief and both
may well winter in the crevice within the gnarled
trunk of the old tree into which they creep be-
numbed when the chill of night begins to fall.
The pasture at midday was bright with the yel-
low of coiias butterflies which dashed madly
about from one fall dandelion bloom to another,
eager to eat enough while the warmth should
linger. I saw many of the American copper with
them, these with a more conspicuous white mar-
gin to the tiny wings than I have ever seen be-
fore, a fall form I fancy rather than anything
permanently new in this rather variable insect.
All these the first chill of nightfall sends to
crevices and with them go the black wasps which
have been feeding desperately in the sun on gold-
enrod and aster. The hornets are dead. Not
MYSTICAL PASTURES 239
one was about even in the middle of the day fly
hunting though house flies are still plentiful.
The hornets seem to be almost the first insects
to succumb to the cold. The black wasps are far
hardier. With their passing goes that tiny shrill
uproar of the pasture and in the amber quiet of
sunset the place becomes a vast whispering gal-
lery. Tiny sounds seem to be entangled here
and made audible fr.om very far. The quack of
incoming ducks a mile away across the pond
sounds as if on the nearer shore. The laughter
of children comes as far, nor can you readily
locate the direction. At such times the mystical
quality of the place deepens with the peace of it.
I notice then, as I did not notice in midday, the
fairy rings in the grass on the little rise of ground
and am half-willing to believe I stand by a fairy
rath and call the childish shouts and laughter
that seem to rise from it the glee of fairies over
the coming of nig'ht. After dark any one of
these fairy rings now growing beneath my eyes
may open and let out the troop. Their comings
and goings need be only a little more mysterious
than those of the chipmunks in the old wall or
the Cingalia catenaria that is again flitting forth
240 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
in the chill of gray dusk to seek what honey the
coleuses and the coppers, the vanessas and the
wasp have left behind.
The pale yellow glow of autumn twilight set-
tles in deep peace upon the place. You seem to
be at once in a vast silence and yet able to note
all that goes on in the world for many miles about
by unobtrusive sounds. To stand here in the
open with the night descending in blessing upon
you is to be in touch with the universe. In town
night shuts you away from the rest of the world,
wraps you in your own tiny seclusion. Out here
it makes you one with the deep secrets of com-
mon life. The mystical quality for the time van-
ishes and the radiance which long hoUs the sky
seems but the light of home, a light which is no
longer within a room or shut off by the walls of
a house, but the real home of all the world's
creatures to which you have come at last.
As the glow fades and the darkness deepens
it seems good to lie down beneath the silent pines
that stretch their great arms over you in pro-
tecting fatherliness and become an integral part
of the peace of the place. Sleep that comes thus
is deep and refreshing. Yet always with it there
MYSTICAL PASTURES 241
goes a subtle sub-consciousness which makes you
alert to what goes on about you. Thus with the
piping up of the night wind you hear once more
the rapt voices of the great pines, the chanting of
those weird sages of the unknown. All the mys-
tical comes back to the pasture with the sound
and the deep song of the elder trees comes nearer
to finding words for you than it can at any other
time. I fancy that all the wee lives that sleep
and wake beneath it are part of its mystery, its
longing and its unfathomable promise.
CHAPTER XIX
WHITE PINE GROVES
A tiny brown wing brushed my cheek this
morning, flitting madly southeastward on the
wings of the November gale. It was a belated
one of many that have scattered from the pine
tops this autumn, for it was the single wing of a
white pine seed and the cone harvest has been
good. Ever since August the squirrels have
known this and the stripped spindles lie by the
score under the big pasture pines where these
have left them after eating the seeds. It seems
much work for small pay for the squirrel. He
must climb venturesomely to the very tip of the
slippery limb, gnaw the cone from its hold, then
run down the tree and gnaw it to pieces for the
tiny seeds within. So light are these seeds, wing
and all, that it takes twenty to thirty thousand of
them to weigh a pound and it is probably for-
tunate that squirrels do not live by pine seed
alone. However, the gnawing means as much to
the squirrel as the eating, for the squirrel's teeth
242
WHITE PINE GROVES 243
grow constantly and he must continually wear
them off or he dies, stabbed by his own incisors
which grow in the arc of a circle. Yet the squir-
rel is an adept at getting at the tiny, toothsome
seed and he can strip a cone of its scales far faster
than I can, even if I use' my knife. He holds
the cone stem end upward in his fore paws which
are so like hands, severs the base of the scale
with his ivory shears and has munched the two
little seeds that cling under the very bottom of
the scale, almost before you can see him do it.
Certain wise naturalists assure us that the
squirrel does not use reason in this handling of
the cone, merely acting automatically by blind in-
stinct. Yet he gets his results in the shortest
time and with the least effort. The highest rea-
soning could teach him no more and if instinct
is such a splendid short cut to the solution of
problems it is a pity that it is not added to our
common school course. The squirrel, they say,
does it because he and his ancestors have done
it in the same way for untold generations, the au-
tomatic impulse being born in him and bound to
appear at the right moment, just as his teeth
grow without his own volition. Yet there must
have been a time when the first squirrel sat up on
244 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
a limb with his first pine cone in his paws. Did
he reason out the way to get those seeds or did
he know instinctively? And if so what is in-
stinct in his case?
For all the squirrels got so many cones that in
some places in fhe woods the ground is fairly
carpeted with the brown scales which they sev-
ered, prompted by this clever whatever-it-is that
is such an excellent substitute for wisdom, there
are plenty still left on the trees where they dangle
from the branch tips, their scales gaping and the
seeds for the most part gone. Left to themselves
they have been flying away ever since Septem-
ber, a few at a time on dry, windy days when
their single wings would scull them farthest.
One might impute instinct or whatever it is to
the pine tree too, she works so methodically for
the preservation of her species. A year ago last
spring the mother pine put forth, the beginnings
of those pine cones that now dangle brown and
pitchy, or drop to the ground, useless except as
kindlings for my campfire. Then they were wee
golden-green buds of pistillate flowers, set high
on the uppermost branch tips that the pollen from
the tree's own staminate blooms might miss them
in its flisfht down the wind and thus avoid in-
WHITE PINE GROVES 245
breeding-. If they miss fertilization altogether
they fall off. It is commonly s-aid that the pines
produce a crop of cones once in five or seven
years, which is true in part, just as the statement
that every seventh wave at sea is larger than any
of its preceding six is occasionally borne out by
the facts. I do not recall years in which the
pines have failed to put forth both staminate and
pistillate blossoms. Sometimes frost gets these
and they fail to reproduce. Sometimes a long
rain will prevent the pollen from being dissemin-
ated by the wind until its time is passed and again
there is a failure in cones. Only once in a while
is the season perfectly favorable, and then we get
that seventh wave in pine cones and the squirrels
rejoice that they can file their teeth and fill their
cheek pouches at the same time. The years when
there are no cones at all sending forth their seeds
in September are few indeed. This year the
harvest in my neighborhood has been an excellent
one.
The fertilized bloom soon ceases to be a little
Christmas candle on the tree top, closes its tiny
scales over its growing seeds and becomes a little
green cone, still sitting upright on the upper
branch tip where it grew. By autumn it is an
246 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
inch and a half long, the short peduncle which
attaches it to the branch has lengthened and
thickened, but is not able to hold it wholly erect,
so much has it gained in weight. At that season
the young cone and its fellows have tipped over
horizontal or even becomes slightly pendulous.
Thus it remains through the winter, its scales
pressed close to its core and to one another, de-
fending the tender seeds from all cold and mak-
ing a seemingly solid chunk of the whole. To-
ward spring I have known squirrels to attack
these young cones, but rarely, and I am not sure
whether it was because of the pressure of hunger
or whether some young squirrel's instinct to
sharpen his teeth on them made him a bit pre-
cocious. These adolescent cones begin growing
again very early in the spring. Youth will have
its way, and in this case it seems to seize on the
first sap that gets as far as the topmost branch
tips, compelling it to the nourishing of the young
cones before it can go to the making of new
leaves or even of the crop of staminate and pis-
tillate blossoms for the ensuing summer. The
cones add a quarter of an inch to their length
before the blossoms of that year appear, and
their weight sags them still more on the stem,
WHITE PINE GROVES 247
making them distinctly pendulous. By the last
of August these greedy feeders have not only
ripened the seeds within the still close-pressed
scales, but have multiplied their own length by
four, being four to six inches long and hanging
pretty nearly straight down by their weight.
Their work is done then. Fifty or more scales
has each cone, a hundred or more seeds, if the
fertilization has been perfect, are ripe and ready
to go forth and produce other pine trees. In
early September the sap begins to recede from
these ripe cones, the scales lose their green plump-
ness and begin to dry and curl back toward the
base of the cone. This gives the seed eating
birds, the siskins, the pine grosbeaks and especi-
ally the crossbills their best opportunity and they
eagerly pluck out such seeds as the narrow open-
ings will give them a chance at. Between these
and the squirrels the pine forests of the future
are decimated before their seeds have been
planted. Nature provides bountifully for the
reproduction of all her favorites, yet far more
bountifully in some instances than in others. A
thousand young birches spring from seed, to one
pine in our Alassachusetts woods, and no wonder.
Each birch tree ripens a thousand seeds to one
248 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
that comes to maturity in the great cones of the
pine. Yet there are compensations for the pine
tree. Barring axes and accidents it may hve out
its third century and yearly give more and more
comfort and inspiration to mankind as it in-
creases in dignity and beauty. The birch may
give comfort and inspiration too through its
grace and beauty, but it is kicky if it lasts out
a score of years.
It is often a surprise to me to see how far a
seed will fly with but one wing. The air cur-
rents set it spinning the moment it leaves its
parent tree making of it at once a tiny gyroscope
with a single blade of a propeller. Its gyro-
scopic quality steadies it and the whirl of its pro-
peller tends always to lift its weight. Hence
with a downward current it falls with a less ve-
locity than the wind which whirls it, in a level
breeze it often holds its own, while in the upward
slanting streams of air which flow so often along
and away from the earth's surface it rises easily.
The stronger the wind the more the whirl of
that tiny propeller tends to keep it rn air and
with a good September gale thrashing seed out
of its cones a pine tree may be planting its kind
for miles to leeward. The seed that brushed my
WHITE PINE GROVES 249
cheek this morning made no such offing. Caught
in a back eddy it whirled round a sunny glade for
a moment, then in a sudden lull spun directly
downward to the grass. There again its shape
favored it. The first grass spear stopped its
spinning and it dived plummet-like out of sight,
the thin propeller becoming a tail that kept it
head downward while it slipped most cannily to
the very mould. There I found it, still in such
a position that every movement, every pressure,
would carry it down out of sight of all seed eat-
ing creatures where it might rest and ripen till
spring when it would be ready to germinate.
Searching the pine grove and the scrubby
country that outlies it, I found all stages of pine
growth, from the gnarled patriarch four feet in
diameter at the butt to the germinating seedling.
The patriarch is nearly a hundred feet tall, and
though I know many pines of his height, I have
found none of quite his diameter, and I am very
sure none of his age, hereabouts. His age I can
but guess, yet I know that fifty years ago he was
as large as he is now. Indeed, he had more wood
in him, for his lower limbs that then were green
and flourishing and six to eight inches in di-
ameter have since decayed and fallen away. Re-
250 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
cently a pine was felled in Pennsylvania which
was 155 feet tall and 42 inches through at 4 feet
6 inches from the ground. This tree was 351
years old. I have reason to believe my patriarch
is as old as that one. His height is not so great,
but he has three trunks instead of one, springing
from that gnarled butt at a number of feet above
the ground. There are occasional trees like this
one still standing in eastern Massachusetts.
They have seen their children and grandchildren
grow to marketable size and fall before the wood-
chopper's axe. They have seen one or two gen-
erations of hardwood grow between these cut-
tings, yet they still are allowed to remain. In
cutting off wood it used to be the custom of our
forefathers to leave here and there a particularly
gnarled and difficult pine that the seed might fur-
nish a growth for succeeding generations.
Hence these occasional trees. I may be wrong,
but I have an idea that my patriarch was growing
right where he stands, a young and vigorous
sapling, when quaint old Josselyn wrote about
those two voyages to New England in the early
years of the seventeenth century.
Josselyn gives us to understand that the wood
of the white pine is that mentioned in the Scrip-
WHITE PINE GROVES 251
tares as gopher wood out of which Noah built
the ark. Certainly if the white pine of Josselyn's
day was abundant in the neighborhood of Ararat
in Noah's time he could have done no better.
The wood is light, soft, close and straight
grained. You may search the world for one
more easily worked or more generally satisfac-
tory. Indeed the last half-century has seen the
good white pine of the world pretty nearly used
up, certainly all the best of it, for woodworking
purposes. Fifty years ago it was the cheapest
New England wood, today it is the highest-
priced, and the old-time clear pine, free from
knots and sapwood is almost impossible to obtain
at any price. For all the forestry we can bring
into play it will take more than three centuries
to grow for us such trees as were common in
Maine and New Hampshire a century ago. In
1832 white pines were not rare in Maine six feet
in diameter and 240 feet high. In 1736 near
the Merrimac River above Dunstable in New
Hampshire a pine was cut, straight and sound
and having a diameter at the butt of 7 feet 8
inches. Half a thousand years were none too
many in which to grow such a pine as that.
Could a man have a few of these on his farm
252 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
anywhere in New England today they would be
worth more than any other crop the centuries
could have raised for him.
The youngest pine seedlings hide so securely
in the pasture grass and under the low bushes
that rarely does one notice them during the first
summer's growth. By the end of that time they
are singularly, to my mind, like fairy palm trees,
planted in the gardens where the little folk stroll
on midsummer nights. Their single stem and
the spreading whorl of leaves at the summit of it
are in about the same proportion as those of a
palmetto whose great leaves have been tossed and
shredded by the trade winds. That so tiny a
twig could become, in the passage of centuries
even, a 200-foot tree seems difficult to believe.
It looks no more likely than that the "ground-
pine" which is taller than the seedling and fully
as sturdy should some day be 200 feet tall. Yet
the ground-pine may grow from its creeping
rootstock for a thousand years in the shade of
one grove and never be over a foot tall. Thus
easily may we be deceived by small beginnings.
No palm ever rivalled a full-grown pine in height
and girth, yet a palm comes out of the ground
WHITE PINE GROVES 253
as great in diameter of trunk and with as abun-
dant a leafage as it will ever have.
Watching seedling pines grow year by year it
is difficult to see how the great, clean trunked,
old-time pines that towered over two hundred
feet tall and were from four to six feet m di-
ameter came about. The free growing pasture
pine makes a round headed shrub, for the first
ten years or so of its life, with abundant long
limbs, and is clad in profuse foliage from top to
bottom. Even as decades pass its limbs still re-
main numerous and though there is abundant
wcJod in the half century old pasture pine it is
of little use for lumber, for the limbs, young and
old, have filled its trunk with knots. Where our
present day trees have seeded in thickly and uni-
formly over considerable space it is different.
Then as the trees grow old they grow taller, each
struggling to outdo its neighbors and get more
light and air. Lower limbs decay in time and in
the progress of forty or fifty years we get a
"second growth" pine which is fairly limbless for
a height of forty or fifty feet. Give the trees
another half century if you will. I know many
groves that have had that and still their trunks,
254 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
though fai-rly bare, show the knots where the
limbs have been and produce anything but clear
lumber. It may be that by giving these century-
old groves another century or two we should have
something like the old perfect boles that our
great grandfathers got out of the Maine woods,
but I am not sure about it. I see no promise of
it in the conditions under which pines grow to-
day. Even my patriarch, though he has, I am
very sure, sufficient years to his credit would cut
up into only a medium quality of box boards;
there is no clear lumber in him.
To produce the wonder trees of the early half
of the nineteenth century the tiny seeds must
have rooted plentifully in rich soil, the trees must
have grown so close together as to steadily and
persistently crowd out the weaker and shorter,
and in the passing of two, three or four centuries
we had remaining the magnificent specimens,
towering two hundred or more feet in the air,
their trunks without limb or knot for more than
half that distance. Such conditions may account
for these enormous trees, yet I am inclined to
think that they do not. I am inclined to the be-
lief that in these giant pines we had a variety of
Pinus strobus which was very closely allied to
WHITE PINE GROVES 255
our smaller trees, but which was not the same,
just as the Sequoia gigantea of the higher Sierras
is a gigantic variety of redwood, closely allied to
but not the same as the Sequoia sempervirens,
which flourishes nearer the coast and in the lower
levels. That would easily explain why our pines,
which we call ''second growth," show little ten-
dency to become such majestic or so long lived
trees as the giants of a century and more in age.
It is doubtful if any of the old time mighty ones
remain in any remotest corner of our forests.
It is a pity, too, for it is probable that in destroy-
ing the last one we destroyed a variety of pine
that was far nobler than any left.
CHAPTER XX
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER
In late autumn the pasture is a place of ghosts,
yet ghosts so friendly withal that one walks
among them unafraid. November is the month
of transition when many of the pasture folk pass
on to another, perhaps a better life. The blue-
jays stop their harsh teasing screams now and
then to toll a clear, musical passing bell for these,
and the nuthatches are goblin gabriels blowing
eerie trumps of resurrection to which the spirits
of the bee people drone a second as they wing
their way onward. The great white town of the
white-faced hornets is conspicuous on the blue-
berry bush down in the far corner and within it
are the husks of a few of its once roaringly busy
inhabitants. But it is very quiet and only a few
of the husks remain. The others are scattered
the pasture over and on them the shrubs drop red
fruit and wreathed beauty or autumn leaves, in
memoriam. The bumblebees, the yellowjackets
and many another variety of scintillant, fairy-
256
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 257
winged wild bee are with them. Their summer,
like ours, is gone, and they with it, though a few
of the young queen mothers are safely tucked
away in warm crevices, to sleep secure until May
wakes them for the peopling of the place once
more.
I had thought May with its tender pastels of
young color and its bubbling joy of spring song
the most beautiful month in this gentle world of
out-of-doors, but that was in May. Now I am
convinced that November in its ethereal serenity
is loveliest. May held but the vivid joy of
ecstatic expectation; November speaks with the
peace of fulfilment and the calm understanding of
those who look with clear eyes into another
world.
Between midnight and dawn I fancy the pas-
ture folk who are still this side the pale get their
farthest glimpse into the world which lies beyond.
The pasture on whose bosom they dwell sleeps
deeply then, its breathing not even faintly rust-
ling the frost-browned leaves of the white oaks,
not even sighing those ancient, druidical hymns
through the pine tops. Sometimes as I stand
with them I try to feel this bosom rise and fall in
the slow rhythm of deep slumber, but even on
258 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
such nights with the senses aquiver with expecta-
tion of the unknown I fail. I dare say the fox
that sHps along the winding paths at dawn and
the little screech owl that calls lonelily to his
mate note without noticing these and many other
things in which our human perception fails.
Man cultivates his brains to the dulling of his
senses and builds a wall of useless possessions,
attainments and entertainment about him till he
hears only a few things and sees but through
tiny chinks like the prisoner in a dungeon. Yet
we are not altogether endungeoned. We are be-
ginning to know our danger and cry "back to
the woods," which may yet be the slogan of our
next emancipation. It is a long path back for
some of us and to cover it at a bound has its
dangers. The earthworm shrivels in the sudden
sun and to leap from the city block to the depths
of the woods is to suffer from the "growing
pains" of awakening, atrophied senses. The
half-way ground is the pasture which once was
the forest, which later was man's, and where now
nature and human-nature mingle in friendly
truce. In the depths of the woods the town
draws me toward itself. In the city I long for
the woods. In the pasture is the smiling truce
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 259
of the two forces. In the one I know best, as in
most of our New England pastures, the cattle
have long- ceased to browse and men come only
because nature draws them thither. The wild
creatures seem to sense this and to lose much of
their woodland fear of me. Last night, in the
first promise of the gray of dawn a fox barked
at my camp door, scratching at the threshold as
if he were the house dog, asking to be let in out
of the cold and lie at the fire. I heard the barn-
yard roosters faintly crowing in the distance, but
a little screech owl called clearly on a limb just
beyond the ridge-pole. The roosters' cry had in
it nothing but self-gratulatory bombast, I kno.w
town-dwarfed men that talk like that. The owl's
call was to his mate, as was the roosters', but
there was no bombast in its plaint, just a mourn-
fulness of endearment, a touch of tears at the
silence and delay. After a little the other came
and all the mournfulness went out of the tone.
Instead there was cooing in its quality as the
two talked reassuringly a moment. The first call
is of six or eight notes that start high and tremulo
down the owl's diatonic scale to a low one that has
a round, flute-like quality though the whole
sounds as if it were made somewhere else and
26o OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
were merely echoing from the wood. The bird
is as hard to locate by sound as an echo would be
and is usually much nearer than it seems when I
hear him. The second call is the last note of the
first one, three or four times repeated with such
rapidity that it has a flute-like reverberation that
is almost like a round and very musical purr.
The cry of this bird has been called eerie and dis-
quieting, but I do not think it so, even in the
loneliness of the question call. The satisfied one
is as gentle and cuddley as one can find among
birds.
The pasture ghosts of still November nights
are apt to be most portentous between the hours
of midnight and dawn. The giants of eld stalk
noiselessly about them, figures of gray mist out
of a world of silence. Sometimes they rise like
simukcrums of ancient forest trees out of grassy
spots that by day were cosey with sunshine and
enclosed by barberry bushes hung with coral fruit
and prim cedars, spots where no tree has stood
these hundred years. Anon they change to dim
figures of preposterous beasts, called back to
earth for a brief hour while the old moon, worn
and thin, rises through them, a nebulous red cres-
■^
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PUBLIC LIBRARY
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 261
cent, and the stars fade, yet show dimly through
like the moon, proving that these are but disem-
bodied monsters. Sometimes they wait till dawn
bids them dematerialize before it. More often
winter, which is most apt to steal in upon us late
at night in November, breaks their backs with
the weight of his cold and spreads them as hoar
frost upon all things below, showing us how thin
and of little substance they really are. Some-
times this breakage comes with the first gleams
of morning light and I feel the chill of their
passing as they sink slowly to the grass.
They are beautiful in their eerie suggestions as
they flout my three o'clock in the morning cour-
age, but lovelier far when they sparkle on the
grass and shrubs under the sudden flare of the
rising sun. I fancy that with clearer Hght all
our gorgons and chimeras dire will become but
sparkling fairies, for these certainly do. Twig
and leaf and grass spear bend with the clusters
of them. I see the fluff of their ermine gar-
ments, their tossing white plumes, and get the
glint of their jewels, breaking up the white light
into multiple rainbows that flash all the pasture
world with a dainty glamour of romance. Just
as the touch of winter, slipping down from the
262 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
far north under cover of darkness, first raises
these spectres, then lays them, so the sun makes
their cheery, frostwork beauty a marvel of de-
light for a brief time, then sends it back to the
earth whence it sprang and wipes away ail tears
from the eyes of the shrubs and grasses that weep
at losing such delicate beauty.
In those crisp morning hours of early sunlight
all the ghosts are laid. The winter chill which
made them has frozen them all out of the air.
The twigs and leaves that gave them refuge have
wept and kissed them good-by at the shout of the
oncoming sun and no suggestion from the world
beyond meets the eye. The ghost chill is frozen
out of the sky with the ghosts; the wine of the
morning is so poured through the dry air that
you must drink it to the lees whether you will or
not. Such mornings as you have had in April
you may get in November, nor hardly can you
tell without the assistance of the almanac which
season it is. The bare twigs have the flush of
expectancy on them, the blushing hope of new
buds, as soon as the leaves of the year are off
them. It may not be so bright and winning, but
you will not note the difference, for it is there,
painted during the ripening of this year's leaves.
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 263
If it were not that some of these still cling the
illusion mig-ht be complete.
There too, to be sure, are the brown stems of
the pasture goldenrod standing stiffly as if to
state with grim definiteness that all rainbow
hopes are folly and there will be no more blossom-
ing for them. Their leaves are dun and sere
where they have not already fallen and their tops
that in early September were such soft cumulus
clouds of golden yellow are but scrawny clots of
brown, draggled by the tears in which the sud-
den sun has drowned the pasture. Yet these
least of all should be pessimistic in November,
for as the sun dries their tears another summer
comes back to them and to us, Indian summer,
which is the finest season of the year. The
Indian winter of the dark hours before dawn
steals down with all spears pointed for the mas-
sacre of the summer flowers that still linger un-
protected, and the white magic of its own cold
changes the spears to delicate, tiny frost fronds
and blooms on all the outdoor world. Then, with
the full day, comes Indian summer, slipping
along all the pasture paths and lingering in the
sheltered hollows among the evergreens. In her
presence all the sorrowing plants seem to lift
264 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
their heads and a new blossom time comes back
to the brown, despondent goldenrod. A warmth
glows in its pith which is as dear as that of its
prime yet has in it some of the stir of autumn
crispness. Under its power the draggled clots
that once were flowers lift, fluff out, bud and
bloom as does the magic plant under the potent
spell of the sorcerer of the Far East. You may
see on such Indian summer mornings the florets
of these dead goldenrod stems lifting and spread-
ing and before your very eyes the plant bursts
into bloom once more. These blooms are the
day-time ghosts with which the November pas-
tures are full, misty gray flowers that stand on
the same receptacles that held the yellow blooms
of late summer, but are lovelier far than the first
blossoms were. Each dewy night, each rainy
day, they shrivel and seem to pass but the warmth
of the sun and the drying wind need but a brief
hour in which to bring them all out again. After
Indian summer has gone for good and the De-
cember snows are deep the stiff stems will still
hold these renewing gray blooms above the drifts
and make all the pasture beautiful with the
ghosts of summer flowers. Nor, lovely as they
are to my eye, will they be less beautiful to the
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 265
winter chippies, the goldfinches, juncos and a
host of other seed-eating birds who will find them
bountifully spread for their delectation all the
winter through. On rainy days I like to bring
these brown stems into camp and, setting them by
the glow of the open fire, see them bloom as they
dry out. It is a most magical flowering and to
be one's own wizard is one of the delightful
privileges of being a November sojourner in the
pasture.
For all the Indian winter which some nights
ago brought us a temperature of twenty degrees
and left ice a half-inch thick on shallow pools
many of the pasture folk hold their summer attire
well. The wild apple trees have hardly made a
change, holding plentiful leaves whose green is
dulled by a little, and otherwise defies the season.
The bayberry has leaves as glossy green and
unmarked by any sign of approaching winter as
it held in August, and though the taller wild
cherry trees show autumnal tints the younger
ones are still in fresh green. This tendency of
the young sprouts to hold on and deny the winter
I note on many young trees. The birches are in
the main bare but the young wood at the very
266 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
tops, and the tips of sprouts from the stumps of
trees that have been cut, stih hold leaves whose
pale yellow simulates flowers, as if the trees, like
the witch-hazel, had decided to bloom only at the
very last moment, preferring the Indian summer
to that which came to us in the full flush of June.
So it is with the blueberry shrubs. The pinky-
red top twigs hold their foliage still but they
have sent some of their own flush up into these
leaves and they hang there like pasture poinset-
tias, waiting to be part of the red of Christmas
decorations. The meadow-sweet is in the bloom
again, but instead of pinky white racemes top-
ping the whorled green on its brown stalk the
leaves themselves bloom in pale yellow with pinky
flushes that make it as truly a sweet thing of the
meadow as when it called the bees in July. The
red alders add the coral of their berries and the
barberries give the deep rich red of their fruit
through which the sun shines with the ruby ef-
fect of stained glass windows. The November
pasture is less profuse in its colors than it is in
earlier autumn but one sees farther in it, and
clearer. There are times when the gray walls
of its maples and hickories stand illumined by the
sunlight slanting through the vivid colors of its
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 267
remaining foliage till the place glows with rich
lights and seems a cathedral in which one ought
to be able to hear the roll of anthems and the
chant of bowed worshippers.
Such are its changing moods on November
nights and days. The constant features are the
pines and cedars. Summer and winter alike
these stand unchanged, types of constancy and
vigor. Yet, though there is no change, one who
loves them both can at a time of year see a cer-
tain variation. This comes with the spire-like
cedars, that stand so erect and point ever heaven-
ward in closedrawn robes of priestly solemnity,
in early May. Then for a few brief days the
glow of spring sunshine gets into their blood and
they gleam with hidden bloom through the olive
green of their gowns, lighting up like sombre
faces that unexpectedly smile and are flooded
with sunlight. The pines, too, bloom in spring,
but conspicuously on their branch tips. The
candles they light then serve only to accentuate
the sober, dark green of their gowns. But in
September the pines shed their last year's leaves
that have grown a little dull and rusty with long
service, and now stand forth clean and more
vividly green than at any other time of year.
268 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
The deciduous trees follow the fashions and
change their suits for the prevailing mode three
or four times a year, yet it is true of them that
nature unadorned is adorned the most. There
is a beauty in the bare wood standing revealed
in November that they never had in the flush of
June or the glory of early October. There is
nothing in flower -or leaf that can match the ex-
quisite harmony of the bark tints, nor can the
foliage in mass so please the eye as the delicate
tracery of twigs and the matchless contour of
tapering limbs. In the November birch or
maple the dryad herself stands revealed.
It is not so with the pines. They change
gowns so decorously and the new one is so like the
old in its simple lines and perfect good taste that
we are unaware of the transition. There is a
perfection of dignity and serenity about a free-
grown pasture pine that I find equalled in no other
tree. These are druids of eld, if you will, harp-
ers hoar, plucking wild symphonies from the
tense wires of the storm wind's three-stringed
harp. Yet the dryad dwells within them as well,
and on gentler days they show her in many phases
of queenly womanhood. They mother the romp-
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 269
ing shrubs, the slender, maidenly birches, the ma-
ples, vainglorious in their dainty spring colors,
their voluminous summer robes, their gorgeous
autumn gowns, and they do it all with a kindly
dignity that endears, while they stand high above
all these in their perfection of simplicity. They
can be tender without unbending, and in their
soothing shadow is balm for all wounds. To-
night the sky is black with rain that tramps with
its thousand feet on the camp roof and marches
endlessly on. The wind is from the east and the
pines sing its song of wild and lonely spaces.
Yet one great tree that was old with the wisdom
of the world before I was born stretches a limb
to the camp window, and in the flicker of the fire-
light I see it stroke it caressingly with soft leaf
fingers and twigs that bend back at the stroke.
It is like the hand of a child reaching to its moth-
er's breast with wordless love and tenderness in-
expressible. The caress makes a lullaby of the
weird song above, and in it I hear no longer the
lonely cry of ghostly space, but only one more
expression of the homely peace and mother love
that seems to dwell always in the sheltered nooks
of the pasture.
CHAPTER XXI
RED CEDAR LORE
The rough November winds which roar
through the bare branches of the tall trees ride
over spaces of sun-steeped calm in the sheltered
pastures. Here often summer slips back and
dances for a day, arrayed in all the jewels of the
year. The older birches toss amber-brown beads
upon her as she sways by, but the little ones dance
with her, their temples bound with gold bangles
which autumn gave them. The lady birches are
in fashion this year most surely. Now that they
have doffed summer draperies it is easy to note
their scant, close-hobbled skirts and the gleam of
white ankles through the most diaphanous of
hose. Perhaps the birches have never worn
things any other way but I do not seem to re-
member them so in past years. I always suspect
them of being devoted to the mode of the moment
and likely to appear next year in crinoline, or
whatever else Paris dictates. But that is true
only of the grown-ups. The birch children are
270
RED CEDAR LORE 271
the same always, slender sweet little folk, than
whom summer could have no more lovely com-
panions for her farewell romps in the pasture.
But the most virile of all the pasture's person-
alities is that of the red cedar. When the keen
autumn winds blow and toss the plumes of these
Indian chieftains they wrap their olive green
blankets but the closer about them and seem to
stalk the mossy levels in dignity or gather in
erect, silent groups to discuss weighty affairs of
the tribe. Thus for the larger ones, tall war-
riors that in their time have travelled far, have
met many warriors and learned wisdom from the
meeting. There is no solemnity about these, but
there is dignity and a vivid personality which it
is hard to match in any other tree. It is hard to
think of these as of the vegetable world. I sus-
pect them of standing immobile only at their will
and of being capable of trooping up hill and over
into some other pasture should they see fit, as
readily as the woodchucks would, or any other
four-footed denizens of the place.
The greater trees of the pasture do not seem to
carry such personality. Many of them are like
structures rather than people. The pine that
272 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
spires high is Hke a church. From it as the
winds pass I hear the sound of organ tones and
the singing of hymns in a language that is older
than man, a music whose legend is that of a world
before man was. Perhaps the first pines caught
the music of the morning stars when, first they
sang hymns together and have made it a part of
the ritual of their worship ever since. No nota-
tion that man has devised can express this music
nor can any instrument which man has yet made
reproduce it. Its hymnal is mesozoic. On the
soft brown carpet of nave and transept of this
cathedral tree one's foot falls in hushed silence
and he who passes without his head bowed in
reverence for the solemnity of the place goes
with soul dulled to the higher spiritual influences
of the woods.
On the other hand the white oaks always seem
dwelling houses for the pasture folk. Beneath
their wide-spreading horizontal branches I see
the little folks of the neighborhood at play. Tiny
pines sprout there, playing sedately as if already
touched with the thought of their coming solem-
nity. Little brown cedars, just a few inches high,
gambol on the green turf, and the barberry
bushes that are still too young to wear the gold
RED CEDAR LORE 273
pendants that will come to them in future springs
and the rubies of coming autumns, open their
leaves there 'like the wide starry eyes of wonder-
ing baby girls. The kindergarten of the pasture
is taught under the big white oaks and all the
babies of the pasture folk attend.
The cedars make up much of the picturesque
beauty of the pastures and it is pleasant to know
that these beautiful trees whose personality is so
marked as they group in the golden sunshine,
their bronze garments beaded with the blue of
their fruit, are of excellent family, the}^ and their
relatives greatly esteemed for their value and
beauty the world over. The first explorers of
the country spoke enthusiastically of our red
cedar as one of the finest woods of the New
World, praising its quality and especially its dur-
ability. Indeed the heart wood of red cedar
seems to hold an oil which makes it proof against
vermin and fungi. Every housewife knows the
value of red cedar chips or red cedar chests in
keeping garments safe from moths. Every old-
time farmer knows the value of red cedar as
fence-posts. The heart wood seems practically
indestructible by rot. Posts set in the ground
274 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
for a hundred years, in which the sap-wood has
entirely disappeared beneath the surface, still re-
tain the red heart-wood intact, I dare say good
for another hundred, or maybe many more.
As the tree is sturdy in its defiance of moth
and mould, so it is bold in its endurance of all
weathers and adaptable to all soils. It grows
from Nova Scotia to northern Florida and west-
ward to the Rocky Mountains, being replaced
farther west by another species so much like it
that only the expert can tell the difference. In
Florida, along the Gulf coast and the Bahamas
again, experts say, it is replaced by another spe-
cies, but there too only the experts can tell the
difference. In the beautiful province of On-
tario, between the three great lakes Ontario,
Erie and Huron, is a region where it grows
well and is universally prevalent, and it grows
alike in the limestone flats of the South and on
the bleak sandy prairies and ridges of our great
central plain. In the Tennessee mountains and
southward into Alabama is, however, the greatest
red-cedar region and the place where the trees
reach their finest growth. In northern Alabama
fallen trees have been found loo feet in height,
three feet and more in thickness at a height of
•T3
THE N£W YORK !
PUBLIC LIBRARY 1
ASTOR, LENC
RED CEDAR LORE 275
four and a half feet from the ground, and with-
out Hmbs for two-thirds their height. These
were, of course, trees of the virgin forests, long
since removed that we and all the world might
have lead-pencils. The world has tried many
things for pencils, and some of them have had a
fugitive popularity, but still the millions of pen-
cils daily used are made from the diminishing
supply of red cedar.
To us in New England to whom a cedar tree
thirty feet high is no common sight the stories of
these hundred-foot high trees seem strange in-
deed, and I know of but one red cedar whose
diameter is as much as twelve inches. This tree
is much less than thirty feet in height, however.
It grows by itself on rocky ground in a pasture
where it has no close neighbors of any variety.
Its trunk divides at eight feet from the ground
into many branches which make a round head
whose ancient twigs are hoary with lichens and
seem to be in the last stages of senile debility.
Yet every year the old tree puts forth a crop of
new leaves and defies the decay of centuries.
How many years old this tree is I cannot say,
but I think it very many. We readily tell the age
276 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
of many trees by counting the rings of growth
after they are cut. Cedars have been known to
show an annual increase of half to three-quarters
of an inch thus measured. Others have grown
so slowly that only with a microscope can the an-
nual rings be counted. I fancy my patriarch as
belonging to their lodge, nor would I be sur-
prised to learn that when its first plume appeared
above the ledges Indian tepees were the only
human habitations of the region.
The red cedar seems to have a power to fix
itself on a rough ledge and grow there year after
year and indeed century after century, that is far
greater than that of any other tree. You will
find them on the rocks looking seaward along
much of our New England coast, some of them
the same trees known in the same spots since the
days of the earliest settlers, gnarled, stunted and
storm-beaten, but evergreen, and glowing with a
little of the gold of spring each year just the
same, typical, it always seems to me, of all that is
hardy and defiant in the New England character.
I know such cedars on the ledges which jut
southerly from the edge of the tiny plateau which
is the top of Blue Hill and you may find them on
many other ledges of the range. I believe these
RED CEDAR LORE 277
same trees were there when Captain John Smith
first sighted the "Cheviot Hills" from the ship
which brought him into Massachusetts Bay.
Far different from these are the trees which
grow in the sheltered pastures where the soil is
good. None of these get the round head of my
ancient friend of the ledgy hill. Instead they
grow a single, straight shaft, ten, twenty, or even
thirty feet tall, with many small limbs curving
upward and close pressed toward the trunk, mak-
ing a round, tapering column of living green
trees of singular dignity and beauty that look as
if carefully smoothed up with the gardener's
shears. All the year the pasture cedars are beau-
tiful, and it is hard to say whether they are at
their best in the spring glow of staminate delig^ht
or now when their bronze robes bear the round,
exquisitely blue berries which are really cones.
I have an idea the birds like them best now.
The robins, the cedar-birds, and a host of others
eat these berries gladly, and fly far with them,
planting the seeds as they go. They find shelter
in the close drawn blanket of evergreen foliage
which the trees seem to wrap about them to keep
out the cold and they fill the pasture with flitting
wings all the month. If the season is mild and
278 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
the blue fruit of the cedars very plentiful the
birds are likely to stay by all winter, not minding
the cold so there be plenty of food.
It is worthy of note that the robin and the red
cedar have the same range.
I do not blame the red men for holding the
cedar sacred and ascribing to it certain mystic
powers. They burned cedar twigs as incense in
some of their sacred ceremonies, and surely they
could have found no finer aroma. Some of
tribes always set a cedar pole for the centre of
their ghost dance, and they gave the tree an un-
translatable name which referred to power, mys-
tery and immortality. The Dakotas burned ce-
dar to drive away ghosts, and in the lodge at
night when anyone lay sick there was always a
fire of cedar wood to protect from evil spirits.
Often a cedar bough lay across the door of the
lodge. It is thus that we ourselves hang up
horseshoes.
On the continent of Europe, I am told, the
juniper, which is a very close relative of our red
cedar, is held in great veneration. Tradition
has it that it saved the life of the Madonna and
the infant Jesus when they fled into Egypt. In
RED CEDAR LORE 279
order to screen her son from the assassins em-
ployed by Herod, Mary is said to have hidden
him under certain plants and trees which re-
ceived her blessing in return for the shelter they
afforded. Among the plants thus blessed the
juniper has been peculiarly invested with the
power and privilege of putting to flight the spirits
of evil and destroying the charms of the ma-
gician. Thus, even to this day, the stables in
Italy are preserved from demons and thunder-
bolts by means of a sprig of juniper.
But the lowly juniper is not the only famous
relative of our red cedar at home or abroad.
Closely allied to it are the biggest trees in the
world, famous as descendants from a far-distant
age, yet still living and green. These are the
"big trees" of the Pacific Coast, the Sequoia gi-
gantea, which are indeed trees vastly to be mar-
velled at for their size and to be venerated for
their age and virility, but never to be loved so
well as our dignified and beautiful friend of the
hillside pastures.
Abroad, the cedar of Lebanon, Cedrus libani,
which Solomon glorified in his song, is an allied
species, and so is the cypress, celebrated in song
and story since the beginnings of time. The
28o OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
gopher wood of which Noah is said to have built
his ark is believed by many to have been cypress,
and, like the red cedar, Cupressus sempervirens
is known to live to a very great age. Many in-
stances might be cited of this, one of the most
famous being the cypresses planted about the Mt.
Sinai Monastery by the monks more than a
thousand years ago and still standing there tall
and green in the arid region of southwestern
Arabia. The shape of these cypresses is singu-
larly like that of many a cedar in our New Eng-
land pastures, though their height is far greater.
And as the cedar and cypress are closely re-
lated in longevity, so they are in the durability
of their wood. The former gates of St. Peter's
at Rome were made of cypress in the time of
Constantine. When they were removed and
brass ones substituted by Pope Eugenius IV. they
were still sound, though it was iioo years since
they were first placed in position. Brass itself
could hardly have lasted better.
While the whole Appalachian Mountain region
is dotted with localities where the red cedar
grows plentifully, it is only in the southern por-
RED CEDAR LORE 281
tion that the best pencil wood is obtained. The
demand long ago outstripped the supply and the
great old trees that were peculiarly prized for the
work have in the main passed. These trees seem
to ripen and mellow after passing maturity and
the wood from their red hearts has a peculiar
texture which makes it highly desirable for pencil
wood. Only the higher priced pencils now cut
in that smooth, cheesy, delightful fashion when
being sharpened. The cheaper ones have the
knots and inequalities in the wood which show
them to have been taken from younger and im-
mature trees. Half a million cubic feet of the
best quality of red cedar was once used annually
from these Southern forests in this country, and
nearly a hundred thousand feet of it was ex-
ported. A generation ago one of the world's
great pencil manufacturers, L. von Faber, estab-
lished a red cedar forest in Germany to see what
could be done to artificially supply the demand
for the vanishing wood. In 1875 he set young
trees a foot and a half in height over an extensive
area. At the end of the century these trees had
attained a height of twelve feet and were grow-
ing thriftily. But as the trees have to be nearly
282 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
fifty years old before they will furnish pencil
wood, the value of the experiment is still un-
proven.
But all this is by the way and is not to be
compared with the joy the red cedars give to the
pasture world just by being there and sending
forth the beneficence of their personality upon
all who come. They make the finest nesting
places for the birds in summer. They feed them
in autumn and in the winter's fiercest cold they
wrap the warm blanket of their bronze foliage
about them. Nor do I blame the Indians for
investing them with strange powers. In the sun-
shine of midday they may seem merely friendly
little trees of the pasture. If you will walk
among them as dusk deepens you may feel their
commonplace characteristics slip from them and
the deep mystery of being begin to express itself.
Then they seem like tribes of the elder world, a
connecting link perhaps between the forest and
the red men who but a few centuries ago in-
habited it, far more real at such a time than the
shadowy memories of these vanished inhabitants.
CHAPTER XXII
AUNT SUE's snowbank
For weeks the country folk, wise in weather
lore, have been shaking their heads of a morning
or an evening and saying, "The air is full of
snow!" No one of them can tell you how he
knows it, but he knows. "It feels like snow,"
and that does not mean that the air is of a certain
coldness or chilliness, dampness or dryness,
though there is definite balance of these condi-
tions when we say it. It means that there is in
it another quality, too subtle to be defined, that
touches some equally subtle sixth sense which life
in the open begets in most of us. Fulminate is
full of fire, but it needs a shock or sudden pres-
sure to liberate it. So as the northerly wind
drifted steadily down from the Arctic with no op-
position in the air currents that would give the
requisite counter pressure, the sky held up its
store and we all continued to go forth, snifif, shake
our heads and prophesy. The cold drifted far-
ther and farther south till Jacksonville recorded,
283
284 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
shamefacedly and reluctantly, the same freezing
temperature that New York had. All this while
"Aunt Sue's snowbank" lifted in dun clouds a
degree or two above the horizon in the southeast
of a morning or a night and disappeared again.
Who Aunt Sue was or why the snowbank should
be hers is more than I know, but her snowbank
thus appears in the sky before a coming winter
storm, and has been known as such to the coun-
try folk of my neighborhood for many genera-
tions. The early English settlers of "the Dor-
chester back woods" brought with them many a
quaint proverb and local saying. Some of these
you can trace back to Shakspeare's day, and be-
yond. Others, like the sturdy men that brought
them, have no record in the Domesday Book, but
no doubt as long a lineage for all that. One of
these proverbs that is probably as old as weather
wisdom says:
"Long foretold, long last;
Short notice, soon past."
So as the air and Aunt Sue both prophesied for
weeks without fulfilment, all the weatherwise
world knew the storm would be a good one when
it did come. Meanwhile the steady, increasing
AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK 285
cold put all the woodland into winter quarters.
The ground froze, as we say, meaning that the
moisture in it became ice to a depth of several
inches, making an almost impenetrable ice blanket
through which the most severe winter weather
will work but slowly. Beneath this, or even in it,
all burrowing roots, animals and insects are safe
from freezing. Where the ground is packed
hard, the flinty combination of ice and grit goes
deepest, though even in exposed situations only
to a depth of three feet or so. The woodchucks
asleep in their burrows, the snakes, torpid in their
holes, are as safe from frost-bite as if they had
migrated to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
The rootlets of small, perennial herbs may be en-
cased in ice to their tips, but they do not freeze.
The heat which the surrounding moisture gives
up in changing to ice, combined with their own
self-generated warmth, keeps them just above the
freezing temperature and they live through it in
safety. The same rootlets laid bare to the frost
of a single October night die. The ice which
seems to menace them is in fact their armor. So
it is with countless numbers of burrowing in-
sects. The frozen ground which seems so dead
is full of waiting life which the very frost that
286 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
threatens to kill instead protects. Last Septem-
ber I watched two larvae of the rather common
moth, Protoparce sexta, the tomato sphinx.
Great fat green fellows as large as one's thumb,
they were, each with a spinelike thorn cocked
jauntily on his rear segment. They had fattened
on my tomato vines until they had reached their
full growth and were ready to go into the cocoon
stage, in winter quarters. They dropped from
the vines and began to wander hastily, but seem-
ingly aimlessly, on the ground beneath. But
careful watching showed that each was poking at
the ground every few lengths as he crawled, seek-
ing a situation that suited him. Before long each
had started to burrow, going into the earth slowly
and laboriously, but steadily worming a way in.
Each went out of sight, leaving a hole just his
own size behind him, such a hole as I might have
made by pressure with a round stick. A week
later I dug them up. They had gone down five
or six inches, turned head upward, and there they
were, each a conical brown pupa that bore little
resemblance to the naked green caterpillars that
had gone down into the earth a week before.
Barring the accident of my spade, which neither
could foresee, they were safe from cold and
■^■i-
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AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK 287
enemies. The ground would freeze solid around
them, but that instead of harming them would
simply put the seal of safety on their abode. Nor
were they dead things to be resurrected by the
Gabriel horn of spring. When I poked them
they wriggled with quite surprising vigor, show-
ing that they were very much alive and keenly
conscious. They were not even asleep, else their
jump at a touch would not have been so prompt.
The frost goes deepest in the densely com-
pacted earth, probably because of the density;
the fewer the air cells the better the conductor.
In fluffy soil, especially in the peaty margins of
the pond where the earth granules are large and
loose and there is much moisture, freezing pro-
duces a singular and beautiful result. The ice
seems to crystallize away from the peat in which
the water was ensponged, not in a compact body
nor yet in feathery crystals, either of which
one might expect, but in closely parallel,
upright cylinders from the size of a knitting
needle to that of a slim lead pencil. These are
often several inches long and stand erect at the
surface by the thousand, touching but not coher-
ing, ready to crumble to fragments at the pres-
288 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
sure of the foot but shielding the peat below from
the cold. The ice on the pond may be solid
enough to bear you, but when you step on this
peaty edge you go down into the liquid mud be-
neath. Here you have reproduced in fragile
miniature the same result as happened at the
Giant's Causeway on the sea margin at the north-
east corner of Ireland. There a long vein of
once liquid basalt, freezing suddenly ages ago,
left a great ridge of close-packed, vertical rock
crystals running out an unknown distance into
the sea.
With the good old rock-ribbed New England
earth in winter quarters and the surface vocal
wath Jeremiahs clamoring for snow, it had to
come. The incantations of these raised a witch
whirl in that mysterious source of all our storms,
the region along the tropic of Capricorn, in the
Gulf of Mexico. Up the coast it came, with the
weather bureau flying storm flags in its honor
from Palm Beach to the Penobscot, boring into
the freezing temperature and clear air that the
North wind had spread around us, obscuring all
the sky in the dun clouds of conflict. The young
moon threw her clasped hands to a point of
AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK 289
slender flame above her head and drowned in it.
Aunt Sue's snowbank had circled the horizon and
was rising steadily toward the zenith.
The sky does not give up its moisture readily
this year, else the snow prophets had had their
way weeks ago. The morning after that night
on which the young moon drowned should have
seen the air whirling with white flakes, but only
in mid-forenoon did the clouds give up, and then
grudgingly. All it had for us was a few gran-
ules, first-form crystals consisting of the tiniest
crossed ice needles ground out of shape by the
pressure between the opposing forces of the air.
In the woodland the eye caught a glint of one of
these now and then, but I had to go to the lee
shore of the pond to know that the storm was
really beginning. There the northeast wind
swept the ice for a half-mile, collected these tiny
snow nodules and sent them whirling along the
smooth black surface to bank them in miniature
drifts against the southern shore. They did not
seem to come from the air, instead the ice seemed
to give them up under the pressure of the keen
wind. It was as if the edge of it scraped them
off. The winding streams of them were very
like the spindrift I have seen swept in tortuous,
290 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
level flight from the black waves of the mid-
Atlantic by a wild sea gale. Very white they
looked as they flew along the black ice, yet when
I picked a handful of them from the pond margin
I saw that they were anything but white. In-
stead they were dirty, in places fairly black. The
air had seemed crystal clear for weeks, yet the
snow had found in it the soot of a thousand
factory chimneys and brought it to earth.
The air seems full of a magical new life always
after it has been snowing for an hour or two.
People who are out in it may have cold feet and
tingling ears and fingers, yet they feel the intoxi-
cation of this renewed vitality till the very team-
sters, half-frozen though they may be, shout
cheerily to one another and laugh with the de-
light of it all. I fancy it is because the cleansing
snow has swept all the impurities out of it in its
fall, and all breathe its oxygen disentangled from
soot and dust.
An hour or two more and visible snowflakes
were falling in increasing numbers. The grind
of winds in the upper air must have lessened a
little, for the crystals came down no longer
crushed into grains but with their primary, six-
AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK 291
pointed star form intact. These swirled over the
treetops, but straight to earth behind all wind
breaks, and hung a film of flowing lace between
the eye and all distances of the nearby woods.
Such a curtain the makers of stage scenery imi-
tate when they wish to let the audience see
through the veil into fairyland and through it
we see all beautiful things become more dainty
and we know in our hearts that all wonder-tales
are true, so long as we see them made real
through the magic of this illusory veil. So
through this floating, fairy film of snowflakes it is
easy to see gnomes and sprites dancing and all
the people of northland legends grow and vanish.
The children may believe in Santa Claus in bright
weather with the ground bare, and good luck to
them. It is only when the snow falls in the
woodland that we elders hear the jingle of his
bells in the tinkle of ice-crystal on twig and see
his reindeer lift through the air of the woodland
glade and prance to vanishment over the treetops
in a whirl of the storm. For a little the world is
young again and Santa Claus no myth, even to
graybeards in the Dorchester backwoods, when
Aunt Sue's snowbank comes tumbling home
through the pine tops. On such days weather-
292 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
wisdom is justified of her children and prophets
of storm have honor, even in their own country.
Most of all woodland trees, the young pines
seemed to love this dry, light snow, holding up
every limb and every cluster of green needles
to receive it, stretching them upward as if in
yearning for it. I think it is quite true that in
the December cold, when there is a feel of snow
in the air, the limbs of young pines do bend a
little more toward the vertical. I know that the
upward pointing needles do press a little closer
to the stems on which they grow and thus more
readily tangle and hold the ice crystals that fall
upon them. The tender young shoots of this
year's growth are clothed with these close-set
needles for a space of a foot or more, averaging
ten groups of five needles to the inch, all pointing
upward to the very tip, where they press around
the buds for next year's growth in a close-in-
verted cone. They themselves keep the cold
winds in a good measure from this young bark
and these prized buds. But they do better than
that. When the snow begins to fall they catch
and hold every flake that touches them, skewering
the interstices of the crystals on their needle
AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK 293
points. The first real flakes of this storm showed
as soon on the top tassels of these young pines as
they did in the bare fields.
As the storm progressed, the lower needles of
the spike caught such as got by the filled tops and
soon all the needles of the young trees were filled
with fluffy white snow, until the trees from tip to
butt were no longer green but white, most royally
robed in spotless purity. There was no soot in
this whiteness, all that the air held had been
swept from it by the very first of the storm. No
cherry tree in the full fragrance of May bloom
could show such dainty beauty, such endearing
florescence as these young pines on the borders
of the deep wood. Nor could the pines do better
for their own protection than this. Ice which
encases their tender rootlet's in the frozen ground
and holds them warm and safe through the most
severe cold, came out of the sky with the storm
for the safety of tender twigs and young buds.
Snow crystals hold entangled within their mass
eight or ten times their own bulk of air. It is
this entangled air, whether in the fluff of a woolen
blanket or in a snowfall, that fends from the
cold. The first clear night after a snowfall is al-
most sure to be a bitter one. Calm follows the
294 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
storm, the sky is clear and the radiation from the
snow-clad surface of the earth is great. This
radiation lowers the temperature, and as we look
at our frost-bitten thermometers in the early
morning after, we do not wonder that the mer-
cury has shrunken to the zero mark or below.
But what do the young pines care? This radia-
tion is only from the very surface of the evap-
orating snow crystals. Robed in this regal er-
mine fluff from top to toe, they hold their life
warmth secure behind the entangled mass of non-
conducting air and are safe from all disaster.
Our pines have suffered much from a mys-
terious "disease" for the last few years, and the
most careful study has failed to find any fungus
blight or insect at the bottom of this. We have
had summer after summer of severe and long
continued drought. It is now believed that this
has weakened the trees so that they could not
withstand the winter cold and have been ''winter
killed." With the drought we had several win-
ters of infrequent snowfall. We did better last
winter and the disease seems to be on the wane.
Next to plenty of rain in summer, a winter in
which we have frequent falls of light snow will
AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK 295
be the best medicine for the pines that we could
have.
It is the air entangled among the snqw crystals,
then, which makes the snow blanket, as we often
call it, so sure a protection from cold. The
ground may have frozen to a considerable depth
before the snow comes, but if it stays throughout
the winter there is no frost in the earth beneath
it when the spring melts it away. No sooner is
the ground protected from further freezing from
above than the greater warmth below begins to
melt the frost and change it to life-giving mois-
ture. Because of this warmth from below the
sap stirs in the trees long before the temperature
in the air above the snow blanket has given it
any warrant for such action. It pushes up until
the frost-bound trunk denies it further passage
and there waits the first brief respite in the air
above. Hence in March, though the snow may
be still deep on the surface and the mercury in
the glass fall well toward zero at night, the fires
are started in the maple sugar camps and the
pails hung to the trees. We know that no sooner
will the sun warm their trunks than the sap will
begin to tinkle in the pails, dripping with the
296 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
sweet promise of the spring which is already
pulsing in the subsoil.
It was not a big storm, in my woods, after all.
It lasted less than twenty-four hours and hardly
six inches of light snow fell. Proverbs are half-
truths, anyway, and 'long foretold, long last" has
proved less than half of itself this time. But
though the day is clear and the sun bright. Aunt
Sue's snowbank is lifting its purple mass in the
southeast again and, with the other Dorchester
backwoodsmen, I am wagging my head solemnly
and joining in a jeremiad concerning a big one
next time. I should like to have known Aunt
Sue. I picture her as a stout, keen-eyed, wise-
headed house-mother of the old English stock.
Surely she is the patron saint of the young pines
and of all others who know how to enjoy a good
old-fashioned winter. As such I hope someone
will paint her, seated on a good big snowbank,
attended by cupid pines robed in such ermine as
they now wear, and with the soft radiance of
a snow rainbow around her head for an aureole.
CHAPTER XXIII
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS
The time to go into the winter woods for love
of them is in the still chill of dawn when the blue-
black of the west is hardly yet touched with the
purple that heralds the day, when the high sky
in the east begins to warm from gray to gold and
below black twigs make lace against an amber
glow that draws one as does the flame the moth.
At such a time the cold of the night may lie bitter
on the open fields and the snow crystals there
whine beneath the tread, but in the deep heart
of the woods the warmth of the day before is still
held entangled, an afterglow of the sun that waits
his golden coming once more. At that hour I
like to set my course eastward. The wind, if
there be one, will be at my back and half its keen-
ness dulled thereby, and the ever visible, growing
promise of the sun warms almost as much as his
later presence.
Our coldest midwinter nights are still and the
tangle of the trees enmeshes a protecting warmth
297
298 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
that the outside cold cannot penetrate altogether.
This is the outer winter overcoat of the woods.
Even deciduous trees provide it and the level
boughs of evergreens give layer after layer of
air that fends from the cold. Even without the
snow, the frost penetrates but a little way in the
earth of the woods. No matter how low the
temperature above the tree-tops and in the open
spaces, the ground beneath the trees hardly
freezes, and, if the snow comes, the moment its
blanket is spread the temperature beneath it
warms to above freezing and the frost comes out.
Deep snows are hard on certain winter birds,
but they are the salvation of many of the smaller
winter animals and they provide man with one
of the chief joys of the winter woods.
Going forth at dawn one has the full joy of the
day before him and need leave no pleasure un-
tasted. It is something worth while to meet the
sun on such a morning. No wonder the ancient
Persians worshipped him. Even his first rays
enfold you with a warmth that the thermometer
might not notice but which is none the less real
for all that. They set the fires of the spirit burn-
ing more brightly, warming the cockles of the
heart and raising the temperature of the man if
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS 299
not that o£ the air about him. The pleasure of
the pathless woods which is to be yours for all
day is sweetest in the first encounter. Toward
the sun your goal glows with red fire and the
woods seem in its burning to celebrate your ad-
vent. You move eastward the chief figure in
the procession.
For it always seems to me as if at winter sun-
rise all things of the wood move forward in this
matutinal procession of welcome to the coming
warmth of the new day. As a matter of fact, of
course, they do. The whole round earth is
swinging toward the east at a wondrous pace.
But it is more than that. The little winds of
dawn are drawn toward the rising column of
heated air beneath his glow. They come out of
the nether cold of the night and it is the chill of
their passing which often brings the temperature
a little lower as the sun shows above the horizon,
but they go to him to get warm just as the rest
of us do. It may be fancy, but it always seems
to me that the morning birds on their first hunt
for breakfast work eastward. The first flight of
the crows is apt to be in that direction and the
chickadees hunt from the south side of one tree
to that of the next, making the sunward side of
300 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
the grove their rallying place. The trees in
growth reach always toward the sun, stretching
their limbs longest on the sunny side, and it al-
ways seems to me as if in winter they could be
seen to yearn in the same direction with the fond
fingers of bare twigs. I have an idea that meas-
urements made at leaf-fall of one year and again
at bud-time of the next would show this. But
there is really no need. We have but to go forth
in the woods of a clear, still winter morning to
feel the impulse ourselves and to know that it is
universal.
Out of this protecting snow at dawn come the
sm'all folk of the winter woods and to be with
them there is to be at the meeting place of elves.
He who is very wise as to their ways may see
them, once in a while some one of them, or, if
he be very fortunate, more than one. Without
doubt to live in the woods always would be to see
them all, to acquire to the full the elfin quality
one's self and be one of the clan. But they be-
come visible only rarely to the occasional visitor,
these real elves and hobgoblins, and df ten at the
best we must note their presence by the trail they
have left behind. Here has passed the rabbit.
Since earliest light he has been tracking up the
"XS
^
PUBLIC UBRAM
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS 301
woods in his hunt for breakfast, but who sees him
do it? There the white-footed mouse has made
a curious pattern of foot-dots from his home
stump to some other entrance to a way beneath
the snow, the straight trail of his tail showing
between the tiny foot tracks. In another place
the fox has left his curious one-two-three, one-
two-three footsteps.
It is sufficient sport for the morning to take the
early rabbit trails and see what has become of
their maker. Some woodsman may have seen
the rabbit making these tracks unconscious of
supervision, but I will confess that I never have.
Up North I have often watched the varying hare
about his business when he had no idea that I
was one of the party, but the sophisticated Mas-
sachusetts rabbit has always been too clever for
me. But it is not so difficult to follow the tracks,
confusing as they sometimes are in their labyrin-
thine route, to their end for the forenoon. This
is usually a snuggery under some brush or in a
tangle of dried grasses and ferns. Here I fancy
the rabbit backing in and crowding out a sitting-
room and then sitting in it. He will stay in this
"form" until you fairly kick him out, and when I
have done this, as politely as possible under the
302 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
circumstances, I for a moment see the rabbit
making tracks. Ten to one he makes them down
hill, for in that direction lies the cedar swamp in
whose almost impassable tangle he finds safety.
Great tracks these are, too, his short forelegs
just serving to catch and balance his plunge for
a second, then the long hind ones coming wide
of these, outside, and landing far in advance.
They really look as if the animal might have
made them by turning handsprings as he went.
I never see a fox by trailing him. He goes
much too rapidly and ranges too far. Yet the
fox has an interesting habit of following a more
or less regular route. Even when the dogs are
after him he often sticks to his known trail and
the hunters take advantage of this, waiting along
his known route and shooting him as he lopes by,
easily outrunning the dogs and as likely as not
grinning over his shoulder at their lumbering
eagerness. It is all a game to him and if man
would keep out of it the fox would always win.
The way to see a fox in the woods is to figure
out his accustomed route and sit cosily by it. He
likes best to hunt in the dim beginnings of dawn
and again at the evening twilight or by the light
of the moon. But often a fox may be seen jog-
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS 303
ging along in the full daylight. The very keen-
ness of the animal seems sometimes to work his
undoing. He knows well that the dogs cannot
catch him so he jollies along just in front of them
over his accustomed route where he knows every
possible pitfall of the way. And the hunter wait-
ing- to leeward shoots him. Had the fox had
fewer brains and simply bolted in a panic as soon
as the dogs got on his trail he might have lived
to bolt again the next time. Once in a while you
find a panicky fox that does this. When the dogs
get after 'him he makes a straight streak for king-
dom-come and the hunter with the gun waits in
vain.
But on days when there is no gunning going
on the fox will sometimes walk right onto a man.
Recently my next-door neighbor, tramping his
oak woods with no thought of stealth, rustling
through fallen leaves and snapping twigs, walked
round a corner of a woodpile and met a fox trot-
ting along in the opposite direction. The animal
gazed at him in astonishment for a second and
then fled. My neighbor accounts for it in this
way: The fox has brains. Consequently he
gets into a brown study as a man will, planning
affairs and studying out situations. Woodland
304 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
creatures whose living is conducted largely auto-
matically are automatically alert and do not walk
straight up to danger which rustles and thuds
warnings of its presence. It takes a thinker to
get so immersed in his own affairs of the brain
as to get caught that way.
The potency of the sun on clear mid-winter
days in the woods is wonderful. His rays seem
to put a reviving, warming quality into the air
which has little relation to the actual temperature
as recorded by the thermometer. The forest
catches this unrecorded warmth and with it en-
velops all creatures. It holds back the wind
which seeks to chill, and by the time the sun is
high and one is weary of swinging along the
levels on snowshoes he may rest in comfort in
the radiance. The recorded temperature may be
far below freezing. The actual feel of the air
in a cozy, snow-mantled nook is so genial and
comforting that one wonders that the buds do
not start. To go to the southward of a clump of
dense evergreens is as good as a trip to Bermuda.
On such a day the noon fire is a pastime rather
than a necessity, though the makin'g of a lux-
urious lunch may require heat. To tramp a spot
on the snow with the snowshoes and then start a
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS 305
fire on it is to demonstrate the non-conductivity
of this ermine mantle of the woods. The fire will
burn long before it melts a hole through to the
ground beneath, and if the snow is fairly deep it
will remain unmelted beneath a gray mantle of
ashes after the fire is out. There is unquestion-
ably a primal joy in a fire thus built in the snow
of the deep woods. Wherever man sets up the
hearth there is home, and the first flare, the first
pungent whiff of wood smoke, touch a deep sense
of comfort and make the wayfarer at peace with
all the world. To toast bread upon a pointed
stick and to broil a bit of meat in the blaze is to
add a zest to the appetite that the wholesome
exercise in the keen air has stimulated. Except
as a zest one's luncheon does not need the heat at
such times. So potent is the oxygen of the keen
air and so deeply does it reach to the springs of
life that one may eat his food cold and raw as the
crows do and be satisfied and nourished.
Sitting in the silence and the sun as the fire
smoulders to gray ashes one may take stock of
the birds of the woods by ear and eye. In the
still air all sounds carry far. The cawing of the
crows rings a mile across the tree tops, but these
are the only winter birds one may hear far in the
3o6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
full sunshine. The bluejays, so noisy in the au-
tumn, are silent in midwinter. Rarely, indeed,
at the depth of winter do you hear one of them
utter the clear, clanging call of his race. But
the wood holds them still, and as the campfire
burns low they are apt to come about it, knowing
well that beside deserted campfires scraps of food
may be found. On such expeditions they come
on noiseless wing, whinnying one to another in
voices inaudible a few rods away. If one sees
you he may utter a single loud note of warning,
but that will be all, and the flock will scuttle
away on noiseless wnngs as they came.
A nuthatch may come to perch upside down on
a tree nearby, blowing his elfin penny-trumpet
note, a brown creeper may screep tinily or a
downy woodpecker knock gently at the doors of
insects shut within the rotten wood, but only the
chickadees are noisy. Their volubility is proof
against the hush laid upon the forest by the west-
ering sun, and you can hear them sputtering their
way through the underbrush from afar. Birds
in the wood mostly leave a trail for the ear rather
than the eye. On such a day, even in the coH of
January, you may hear a ruffed grouse drum.
The seeping sun warms the cockles of his heart
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS 307
and reminds him of the brown mates of last
spring, and he needs must hop up on the old
log and drum for them, though there is little
chance that they will heed his amorous call. The
ruifed grouse has much brain even for a bird, as
his ability to live in our Massachusetts woods in
spite of the omnipresent huntsmen shows, but like
the fox, he, too, sometimes gets in a brown study
and may allow you to meet him at a corner.
When this happens to me I am always sur-
prised to see what a fine dignity the bird has in
the woods, unconscious of observation. His car-
riage is that cfi a lord of the thicket, and he seems
far larger and taller than his bulk and length
when put to the yardstick would show. I always
think his tracks in the snow show something of
the same characteristics, as if he unwittingly
wrote his character into his signature, as most
of us do.
All in all it is a fine sport, this hunting of the
wild creatures of the wood without harming
them. To bag them in one's memory or one's
notebook is to accomplish that feat long desired
of mankind, to keep one's cake and eat it too,
while he who shoots kills his joy in the acquiring
of it.
3o8 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
At dusk of the still winter day the cold of in-
terstellar space drops down among the treetops
and seems to reflect back toward one's marrow
from the snow beneath. Then I like to preface
the homeward trip by one more campfire. A
grove of young white pines provides the best ma-
terial for a quick fire. The upper boughs of
such trees so shade the lower ones that they die,
but remain dry and brittle on the trees, full of
pitch, making the finest kindling material in the
woods. It takes but a strong pull to break such
limbs off near the trunk and they may be broken
into stove length over the knee or in the hands.
Even in a rain the tiny twigs of these limbs will
light at the touch of a match and no snow can
be so deep in the winter woods but they are im-
mediately available. They make a smokeless fire
that gives off a fine aroma and much heat. In its
ruddy glow is home, its flickering flames weaving
an ever-changing tapestry on the gathering dusk,
the black pines standing like beneficient genii
watching over the altar flame in the snow.
Many a woodland thing will stand at gaze just
beyond the circle of this campfire whose flare may
shine back from the eyes of a wandering deer.
More likely it will shine from the eyes of the only
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS 309
night bird of the winter woods, an owl. Per-
haps the last greeting from the woods which
the wayfarer will get as he leaves the diminish-
ing red glow of the falling embers behind him
and fares on under the keen, cold twinkle of
the stars will be the questioning "who-who-
whoo?" of the one of the big species of
these birds, a barred owl or a great horned
owl. More likely in our neighborhood it will
be the gentle, quavering call of the little
screech owl, a voice of friendliness out of the
silence, dear to every true lover of the woods.
With this voice and perhaps a gleam of the
friendly eyes in the purple dusk the chronicle of
the day's sport may well end.
CHAPTER XXIV
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG
Looking backward from these days of sloth-
ful ease in getting about it seems as if the golden
days of Ponkapoag were those of a generation
and more ago. Then it was an isolated hamlet.
To be sure, there was a railroad a mile and a half
away and the venturous traveller might go north
or south on it twice a day, though few Ponka-
poag people were that sort of venturesome trav-
ellers. The days of the stage coaches had passed
and the place was more thrown upon its own re-
sources, especially for excitement, than it had
been since they had made it a stopping point on
a main thoroughfare. The railroad brought
bustle to many hamlets, but it took it away from
Ponkapoag and left it a sleepy hollow. Even
the days of the Cherry Tavern and the Ponka-
poag Inn were past and the poet Aldrich and
other people of latter-day renown had not ap-
peared to make it famous.
Now the trolley car buzzes up and down the
310
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG 311
long steep slopes of Ponkapoag Hill and the au-
tomobiles honk in endless procession both ways.
The old houses stand, but a new generation oc-
cupies them and the cosey, self-centered life of
the old village has completely passed. Even the
people who knew its traditions of a half-century
ago are gone, too, and though the Christmas
snow brought good coasting I doubt if it brought
many coasters to the old hill. Yet Ponkapoag
Hill was once famous in the region all about for
its coasting and the enthusiasm and ingenuity
of the Ponkapoag coasters. On days and nights
in the oldfashioned winters, when the sledding of
big logs to the sawmill on Ponkapoag brook had
made the course down the hill one glare of ad-
amantine snow between deep rifts, the population
of the village used to turn out; not the big and
little boys and girls only, but the grown-ups even
to the venerable gaffers of those days who could
remember how they used to coast there before
the Civil War was thought of, when the Cherry
Tavern still fed scores of pleasure-seeking Bos-
tonians on big, luscious black-heart cherries each
June, and in winter the Ponkapoag Inn had its
patrons from the big city not only for coasting
but for pickerel fishing on the pond.
312 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
Modern easy methods of transportation and
communication have put the typical New Eng-
land village, with its manly, self-reliant, self-
centered life, out of existence, and with it have
passed or become decadent many of its commun-
. ity sports. I doubt if Ponkapoag will ever again
see such coasting as it has seen, and I fancy the
same may be truly said of hundreds of big hills in
other towns. The sport still holds in one form
or another, but it has changed. Coasting in the
streets is rightly forbidden now in many com-
munities. The chances of meeting dangerous
obstructions in these days of multitudinous au-
tomobiles and omnipresent trolley cars are too
great. In the old Ponkapoag days such things
were unknown, and the rarely occasional sleigh
or wood-sled was little to be feared. The driv-
ers who were not coasting themselves knew the
coasters had the right of way and "cleared the
lulla" to let them by.
There came nights like that of the Christmas
just passed when the still, dry air intoxicated the
coasters and carried their shouts far under the
golden moon. Then there would be a constant
procession of swiftly flying forms from the brow
of the hill where Blue Hill loomed clear-cut
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG 313
against the velvet sky behind, to George B/s
blacksmith shop, at least. Certain flyers were
fabled to go farther and, on perfect sledding, to
make the gentle declivity clear to Potash Meadow
and brook. Such as did this were famous the
region through.
It is probable that the coasting on Ponkapoag
Hill began with the coming of white settlers to
the region, "the Dorchester Back Woods." The
Indian invented the toboggan, but he seems to
have used it for a sled of burden and not as a
pleasure chariot. Coasting is essentially a white
man's joy. No white man could have a tobog-
gan at the top of a snow-clad hill and not im-
mediately use it to coast down on. It is in the
blood. Tradition has it that the legions of Caesar
came over the Alps, and finding the snowy slopes
in front of them, immediately sat down on their
shields and slid down upon the Northern races
they had come to conquer. Many a New Eng-
land youngster in days gone-by learned to come
down a hill on a barrel stave in much the same
way; he, too, with blood of the conqueror in his
veins. The toboggan wasn't really invented; it
grew. From that invention has worked out
many devices specially fitted to the sport under
314 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
special conditions. Switzerland has seen coast-
ing come up from the utilitarian exuberance of
the Roman legions to a sport which is interna-
tional and which draws coasting experts from all
over the world. They call it tobogganing, which,
of course, it is not and in modern days at least
never was, for it is all done on a sled with run-
ners. *'Schlittli" the Swiss call it, and though it
seems a far cry it may be that our word sled has
been developed from it. At least both begin with
S.
Elaborate books have been written about "to-
bogganing" as it has developed at Davos and St.
Moritz, in the Alps. The Swiss Schlittli seems
to be much like what the Yankee boys call a "girl's
sled," a board seat set high on skeleton runners,
that I fancy were at first of the plain wood but
later came to be shod with flat iron. On this
the coaster sits and goes down the hill sedately,
feet foremost. Thus the early Swiss toboggan-
ing was done, the rider steering by putting out a
foot to the right or left, after the fashion of the
small girl today on her similar sled. Such coast-
ing is done by careful elderly people in St. Moritz
or Davos today, only they use wooden pegs held
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG 315
in either hand to steer by. The courses on which
they coast are short and straight, modest Httle
coasts such as befit their condition. Then Amer-
ican sports brought to Switzerland the cHpper
sled. It easily outdistanced the Schlittli, and for
the swift, winding courses on which the races
were held became the favorite. The clipper sled
was born in America, and millions of boys here
have them today. They are swift, sturdy, and
well fitted for the sport. Their solid wooden
runners were long ago shod with flat steel, but
for a generation that -has been superseded by
spring steel, round runner-shoes that add to the
swiftness most materially.
In 1877 the first of this coasting was done by
the English at St. Moritz, and ever since the
courses there have been steadily improving, and
"toboggans" as well. The final word has be-
come a skeleton frame of steel, the wooden run-
ners being entirely removed from within the shoe
and the rider occupying a thin board hung be-
tween the upper frames. The under part of the
heavy steel runner is grooved so as to grip the
ice, and the whole "rocks" after the style of the
oldfashioned "rocker" skate. Thus on a curve
3i6 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
the rider, putting his weight aft is able to turn
more rapidly without the sled losing its grip on
the ice beneath. On these the Swiss coasters
negotiate S curves at surprising speed, and are
estimated to reach sixty or even seventy miles
an hour on the straight stretches of the world-
famous course. As might be supposed by any
one who coasts, this speed is not made with the
rider sitting on his sled girl fashion. Long ago
the American visitors taught the St. Moritz coast-
ers that the way to ride a clipper sled on a swift
coast was to go "belly-bump," prone on one's
belly, with a foot ready to steer at the right or
left as the case might be. The stability is surer
because the centre of gravity is lower, the wind
resistance is less, and the method is safer and
better, if it is not so dignified. The records
made thus converted the most phlegmatic Eng-
lishmen at St. Moritz, and since then this has
been the approved fashion.
But we have gone coasting a long way from
Ponkapoag Hill. There, long before the Swiss
course was thought of the evolution in sleds was
going on, and though Ponkapoag did not evolve
the steel-frame skeleton coaster it got up some
tasty rigs of its own. Similar things were
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG 317
brought out all over New England, I fancy, on
all big hills where Yankee boys coasted. One of
these was the double-runner, or double-ripper as
it was sometimes called, rather ominously. I
meet double-runners on the hills sometimes now-
a-days, but not the leviathans of old. The begin-
ning of this community coaster is simple. It is
two clipper sleds fastened together so that the
rear one runs in the tracks of the front one.
Then came a board placed lengthwise across the
two and the double-runner was fairly begun.
Later this board came to be a long plank that
would hold a dozen. With that the capacity of
the common clipper sled was reached. But they
did not stop at that at Ponkapoag. They built
two big sleds specially, shod them with proper
steel runners at the local blacksmith shop,- and
set high above them an enormous, stout plank
with foot rests and all sorts of modern con-
veniences.
The men who told of this enormous rig, a
"double-ripper" in very truth, are dead and I
can't prove it by them, so I hesitate to state the
length of this mammoth coasting device and the
number of people it would carry lest aspersions
be cast on their veracity — and mine — but it was
3i8 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
very long and would carry ^ surprisingly large
number. All Ponkapoag was wont to come out
of moonlight nights and ride upon it, and its fame
carried that of the little village very far. To
have coasted on the big Ponkapoag double-runner
was as much a thing to be mentioned boastfully
in certain sections as it was in others to have
been presented at court.
Bob-sled is a proper, dictionary name for the
ordinary form of this device and it is used at
Davos and St. Moritz for jolly family parties on
the straight courses. There they equip it with a
bugle to herald its approach with joyous tootings,
a bridle of steel wire by which it is steered in
combination with pressure on a lever by means
of the feet of the steersman, and also with a
curious brake which consists of a nail studded
board so rigged to the rear sled that the last man
can drop it down to the ice and anchor it by the
grip of the nails, thereby retarding its speed.
The steersman on the mammoth Ponkapoag
bob-sled steered by a rope bridle and the use
of his feet on a stout wooden cross-bar, and
his position was no sinecure. He had at
least a ton of people on board and he had no
brake.
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG 319
After the leviathan slid over the brow of the
hill and began its downward course there could
be no slowing up, no backward sled tracks, till the
end of the course was reached. He must nego-
tiate the curve at Captain Bill Tucker's corner
at lightning speed and must rightly manage the
mass in mighty momentum after that, if he would
not spill them all in Ponkapoag brook. The big
Ponkapoag bob-sled needed no bugle to herald
its coming. When it started off and especially
when it swung the curve at Captain Bill's the
mingled melody of delight and dismay, masculine
and feminine, could easily be heard a mile, and
throughout the course the chant of the coasters
carried runic warning well ahead of the ap-
proaching thunderbolt. In the legend of it all I
find no mention of anyone being hurt.
A great if not famous inventor once lived in
Ponkapoag. James Basin came from one of the
Channel Islands, a French Huguenot, with his
family, and settled in the little village; it would
be hard to tell why. He invented the ''Basin
trumpet," a curious kind of cornet with which
one gets change of pitch by turning a crank with
one hand while holding the instrument to the
mouth with the other. This was played in the
320 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
choir in the Congregational church of those early
days. He invented many other musical instru-
ments, one the forerunner of the cabinet organ
which made a fortune for certain New England-
ers. He invented a braiding machine which has
since his -day made millions for Rhode Island
factories. It may be that he invented the strang-
est form of double-runner that I have heard of,
and which was used on Ponkapoag Hill, but I
fancy not. That I guess was an inspiration
worked out on the spot by some hardy Yankee.
It consisted of a great wood-sled on which half
the village could be accommodated. This was
hauled by horses to the top of the hill, a boy of
more than ordinary courage, strength, and — it
seems to me — skill, sitting on that diminutive
sled in front of the great on-rushing mass and
guiding it in safety to the bottom of the hill, time
after time.
That a boy should have been found that would
turn this trick after he had once successfully done
it is not so difficult to believe as that one should
have the hardihood to undertake it for the first
time to find out whether he could do it or not.
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG 321
This Yankee Casabianca, or whatever he ought
to be called, I myself knew after he had reached
years of middle life and I dare say discretion. I
remember well his breadth of back and depth of
chest, and I think it quite true that he once lifted
a barrel of flour in his teeth, but whether he got
his start in physical strength steering that Pon-
kapoag-invented double-runner down the long
hill, or whether he had to have the strength in-
born in the first place to be able to do it, I cannot
say.
They have a wonderful curve over at St.
Moritz known as the "Cresta Run," 1320 yards
long and abounding in hair-raising thrills from
start to finish. Hardly has the rider, lying prone
on his steel-skeleton flyer, got under good head-
way before he comes to the "church leap." Here
a swinging descent shoots him into a double
compound curve where he must flash to the
left and again to the right in letter S fashion,
helped to be sure, by raised banks on either side
as he needs them. The banks help, but it takes
lightning combinations of wisdom, skill and
strength to make the turns in safety for all that,
nor does he have a chance for a long breath be-
322 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
fore he shoots at ever increasing speed into the
"battledore" where the course turns almost at a
right angle and shoots him on into the "shuttle-
cock" where he must negotiate another right
angle. Then he must immediately take "stream
corner" and be ready for his plunge into "the
straight." From this again he has to take "Bul-
pett's corner." By this time he may be going
seventy miles an hour, but "cresta leap" is before
him, after which he has only to go up the steep
hill which is supposed to arrest his speed at the
finish. Yet even here his skill must be in full
play, as riders have been known to go forty feet
in air over the crest of the hill and take a fine
plunge into the soft snow beyond. Indeed, the
soft snow waits the venturesome rider at every
turn of the famous St. Moritz course, and many
there be who go to it before "church leap" is
fairly negotiated, thus early in the game. The
whole course, nearly a mile, is frequently made
in a little over a minute and a quarter.
All this is fine to see, without doubt, and finer
still to do, but do you know, if I could have my
choice and could see but one, I would choose to
see that leviathan double-runner of a half-cen-
tury ago swinging the curve at Captain Bill Tuck-
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG 323
€r*s corner, followed by that big wood-sled with
the half of Ponkapoag's population on it, and
hear the joyous Yankee shouts as they resounded
all the way from the crest of the hill to George
B.'s blacksmith shop.
CHAPTER XXV
PICKEREL FISHING
I rarely know where the pickerel fishermen
come from. They seem to be a race apart and
their talk is not of towns or politics, of business
or religion. Neither love nor war is their theme,
but ice and fishing through it, and what happens
to a man while so doing. If I suggest Randolph,
or Framingham, Wellesley or Weymouth, they
know them, perchance, as places where such and
such ponds have a depth that is known to them
and ice on which they have had adventures which
they can detail. Those things for which the
towns stand characterized in the minds of most
men are nothing to them, but rather what bait
may be found in their streams or what fish may
be drawn through the ice in their territory. On
days when I talk with them Boston centres about
the Quincy Market, where bait is sold and pick-
erel are displayed, and the sporting goods stores,
the merits of whose tackle are known to a nicety.
Thus are worlds multiplied to infinity, each one
324
PICKEREL FISHING 325
of us having his own. But to step into that of
the pickerel fishermen of a midwinter day adds
zest to the excursion.
They are quite Hke the juncos, to me, these
genial men of the frozen day. They suddenly
appear from I know not where, share the joys
of the day and place for a brief time, then walk
off the ice again with their traps, going I know
not whither. The next day in all probability, if
it be a good one for fishing, others will come to
fish in the same places and in the same way, but
not usually the same men. Thus the winter wan-
dering birds appear, take their toll of the day
and the earth on which it shines, give the joy of
their presence to all who seek it understandingly,
then vanish. It would seem as if the pickerel
fishermen were a distinct species, like the tree
sparrows and the pine grosbeaks, winter visitors
not to be looked for in warm weather, folk who
pass from pond to pond, taking toll of all and
thus learning their characteristics so definitely,
though this seems hardly probable. Probably
my pickerel fishermen of yesterday are artisans
today, bookkeepers perhaps or salesmen, so dif-
ferently dressed and occupied, their talk of such
different things that I would not know them, for
326 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
of all animals man alone is able to put on or take
off an individuality at will, changing his counten-
ance with his garment and his mind with his oc-
cupation. The Natty Bumpo of today may be
the natty dry goods clerk of tomorrow, assuming
the Bumpo with his fishing togs and making his
talk of many ponds fit the clothes.
The fishermen add a touch of picturesque
geniality, of excitement even to the pond, being
as occasional in its daily life as the crossing of a
deer or an otter or the circling of an osprey in
summer. Any one of these causes a momentary
stir, a local disturbance down in the depths among
the regular occupants of the place, but after all
it is but a momentary and local one, and the great
business of the place goes on just the same near
by the spots where the hand of the grim reaper
is busy removing prominent citizens. For in my
pond the pickerel are surely the prominent cit-
izens, the aristocracy, for they are the largest
and strongest and they live directly off their fel-
low fishes, which constitutes an aristocracy in
any community. Minnows, perch, bream and
mullet alike are busy assimilating vegetable mat-
ter, mussels, worms, insects and small crustacse,
merely to form themselves either directly or in
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Pickerel fro-m an Old Colony Pond
r~^£ PEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRAKY
ASTOF. LENOX
PICKEREL FISHING 327
their children ultimately into titbits for the nour-
ishing of pickerel. All the pond world knows
that and its denizens tremble in the presence of
these great-jawed, hook-toothed gobblers of small
fry; and that constitutes a proletariat the world
over.
In fishing time the loneliness of the empty lev-
els of the ice is broken at dawn by the coming
of the crows, especially if there have been fisher-
men the day before. Remnants of the fisher-
men's noon meal are quite likely to be scattered
about the spot where they had their fire, and al-
ways the minnows which they took from the
hooks at leaving are there, frozen upon the frozen
surface. It seems a cold breakfast to us fire-
worshipping mortals, but the crows take it eag-
erly. Often, too, before it is fairly swallowed
fishermen appear, whereupon the crows flap
silently but swiftly away. One knows by this
action that the fishermen are just men, after all,
and not a woodland variety of Peter Pan, though
they merely bob up on the pond margin, or per-
haps well out on the ice, loaded with their traps
and tools. One never sees them coming through
the wood or down the street, or getting off trolley
cars or out of carryalls, these fishermen, they
328 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
just bob up, which would seem to prove a mystic
origin; though of course they are just folks and
somebody knows them, as I have said.
Soon the air resounds with the xylophone
music of their chopping, the solid surface vibrat-
ing beneath the blows of the axe and giving forth
a clear tintinnabulation which is most delightful
to the ear. It is not all xylophonic, but there is
in it, too, the clink of musical glasses and also
a certain weirdness, a goblin withal that seems to
belong with the mystery surrounding the origin
of pickerel fishermen. It is a sound to delight
the ear and linger pleasantly in the memory like
the sleighbell tinkling of ice crystals in a frozen
wood. Stirred by this, or perhaps by the beat of
the risen sun on its surface, the pond itself be-
gins to caper a bit, musically, roaring in basso
profundo a morning song of its own. The re-
sult is grotesque in the extreme. I once heard
a big-chested man sing "Rocked in the Cradle of
the Deep," while his accompanist jigged out an
accompaniment on the highest octave to be found
on the keyboard of the piano. The pond and the
fishermen seem to be doing something like this.
To such quaint music the traps are set, bits
PICKEREL FISHING 329
of lath standing on the edge of the hole and bear-
ing attached to the line a red flannel flag which
the biting fish will strike and carry into the depths
with him when he goes off to swallow the bait.
The fishermen understand well the ways of the
aristocrat pickerel when he swallows a proletariat
minnow. No lordly capitalist ever took in a
plebeian inventor with more grace — and finality.
Often the flag just drops from the support and
lies on the surface of the water while the two get
acquainted. The pickerel has the minnow, but
his grip is not what he wants. He is particular
about the way he swallows a little one, as if he
feared some impending Sherman act. So, hav-
ing got his fish, he waits to turn him so that the
victi-m may head down and seem to go of his own
volition into the interior department. Not until
then does he run out the rest of the line. If the
attorney general fisherman attempts to take him
before that he simply lets go the bait and swims
off, secure in his immunity bath. After he has
started to really go away with his prize a steady
pull is quite sure to result in his capture.
Two varieties of pickerel commonly inhabit our
ponds. One, technically known as Esox reticu-
latus, is the Eastern pickerel, known sometimes
330 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
as green pike or jack, but more often as pond
pickerel. He is a big green fish, a golden lustre
on his reticulated sides and in colonial tirnes he
was known as chain pickerel from this dark link-
ing on his golden green surface. I do not hear
the name now and I doubt if it is much, if any,
used. The pond pickerel waxes fat on minnows
and other small fry and in the course of a long
life grows to be two feet or more in length and
specimens have been caught weighing seven
pounds, perhaps more. It is rather interesting to
learn from the fishermen that certain ponds are
apt to contain pickerel of a certain size, in the
main, as if the conditions of food supply and the
freshness of the water or the amount of sunshine
were only sufficient to bring the most of them to
a definite period of maturity, where they stopped.
But this is, of course, only a general rule, with
many exceptions. One of these is the big fish.
Every pond contains him and every pickerel fish-
erman who aspires to dignity in his class has
hooked this big fellow and lost him and is able
to tell you circumstantially at much length just
how. Most of them know the exact location in
each pond where he lurks and are confident that
this winter they will win in the encounter with
PICKEREL FISHING 331
him to which they confidently look forward.
Usually the fisherman hauls this monster up to
the hole in the ice but is unable to get him through
because the hole is too small. Tales like this,
heard now and then about the fire while we watch
the traps, give assurance that the fishermen are
really very human after all and not of the Peter
Pan species.
The other variety of pickerel is Esox ameri-
canus, the banded pickerel, known hereabouts
mainly as brook pickerel, because he loves grassy
streams. But the brook pickerel frequents the
ponds as well, loving best those of weedy bottoms
and shores and slight depth. He is a slim, little
green fellow, usually not over a foot long and
his dark banded sides easily distinguish him
from the smaller specimens of his reticulated
neighbor. The brook pickerel is found only east
of the Allegheny Mountains, from Massachusetts
to Florida while the pond pickerel is found from
middle Maine to Florida, and west to Louisana
and Arkansas. In spring the pond pickerel goes
up into the ready margins as far even as the
brook pickerel will and often I see him in water
so shallow that his back fin sticks up, looking like
332 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
the sail of a miniature Chinese junk. There he
seeks the lovely little coppery swamp tree-frogs
that are but an inch long and look like tailsmans
carved from metal. These are his tidbits, but
he will take most anything alive that is small
enough for him to swallow, and when in winter
he retires to the warmer layers of water next the
pond bottom, his omnivorous appetite in a large
measure goes with him. Hence the fishermen
use many varieties of small fish for bait, all with
some success.
In the spring nothing else is quite so good as
this tiny, swamp tree-frog. In the winter in the
majority of cases the little silvery minnow known
as ''shiner" is best of all. Yet, the fishermen will
tell you, on some ponds the mummy-chogs which,
I take it, is the still surviving Indian name for
the killi-fish, are to be most esteemed as bait, and
I have found fishermen fishing with young perch
and dace and other hard-scaled fish, though I
believe with indifferent success, nor did the fish-
ermen themselves look to be the real thing. I
fancy that people had seen these folk that fished
with young perch come to the pond, perhaps even
knew them by name and where they lived, and
that the bait had been bought in a city market
PICKEREL FISHING 333
where they even keep young mud-fish for sale as
bait to the unsuspecting, and will assure them
that these are the young of dog-fish and are par-
ticularly alluring. But the fishermen, the real
fishermen, know better.
The mud-fish, more properly the bowfin, is a
small, dark-colored, ganoid fish which is so tough
and will live under such discouraging circum-
stances that it would make ideal pickerel bait if
the pickerel would have anything to do with it,
but they will not. So in some ponds it is with
the mummy-chogs which are admirably tough
and live long and are lively when impaled. On
the other hook the shiner is a little, silvery, soft-
scaled fellow so gentle that he will come up to the
pond side and eat cracker crumbs out of your
hand. I have had shiners so tame from fre-
quently feeding them in this way that I could
handle them, though not to their own good, for
the shiner is as tender as he is beautiful and just
a few hard knocks, that a mummy-chog would
pass with a flip of his tail, will wreck him. Yet
for pickerel fishing through the ice the shiner is
the king of bait and fortunate indeed are those
fishermen who can obtain enough shiners to af-
ford to use them lavishly. Properly hooked, just
334 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
under the after back fin, they survive fairly well
and their silver wrigglings are hard for a pick-
erel to resist.
Though I have said that I never see the fisher-
men ofif the pond I do see them sometimes fishing
for bait. They cut a big hole in the ice for this,
one big enough to let that monster pickerel that
i«s never caught come through, and through this
they drop to the bottom a big hoop net. This
they bait with cracker crumbs and now and then
pull it eagerly to the surface, often with many
shiners in it. There are small ponds that are
famous for being rich in bait alone and from
these the wiser fishermen draw their supply.
Though the fisherman about his fire up under the
lee of the pines on shore loves to tell tales of the
fish of other days and other ponds he is far from
garrulous when on the ice and hard at it. And
usually he is too busy to talk. If the fish are bit-
ing well he tears from one end to the other of his
long rows of traps, playing a fish here, hauling
one out there, setting a trap that has been sprung
by the wind or the too eager wriggling of the
bait, and on most fishing days, whether the fish
bite well or ill, he has to constantly make the
PICKEREL FISHING 335
rounds of his holes, inspecting his hooks to see
if the bait has escaped or been stolen, handling
new ones in the icy water and skimming the
young ice from the holes across his fishing.
Miles a day he runs in the keen air with his bait
pail and skimmer and however many fish he
catches I am quite sure he eats them all at the
next meal.
And not all his catch are sure to be pickerel.
Down below there in the twilight of the warmest
water next the bottom are perch and dace, bass
and eel, and all these are likely to hunger for
shiner. The largest eel I ever saw caught came
up through the ice in this way and I have even
known the clumsy and stupid sucker to come out
of the hole on the hook, making the fisherman
think for a moment that he had hold of the one
big pickerel of that particular pond. I cannot
conceive of a sucker actually attempting to eat
a shiner, even when impaled, impeded and wrig-
gling, so such must have come by the hook in
some other way, probably accidentally caught as
they came by.
As for that monster fish, there are times, even
when the fishermen are not telling me about him,
that I believe he exists. Besides the two vari-
336 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
eties of Esox mentioned there is another which
is common to all suitable waters of North
America, Europe and Asia. That is Esox Lu-
cius, as Linnaeus named him, the common pike.
This fish is very like the pond pickerel in appear-
ance and he sometimes grows to weigh forty
pounds or more and to a length of four feet.
Such a one might well be too large to come up
through the hole which the fishermen have cut
for his little cousins, the brook pickerel. It is
quite possible that one of these Jonah-swallowing
leviathans rules the pickerel in each pond king-
dom, like a Morgan among millionaires. Of the
pike, which he loved well, Isaac Walton has much
to say and I cannot refrain from quoting a few
of his most loving phrases, which are those which
tell how he should be cooked.
"Keep his liver," he says, ''which you are to
shred very small with thyme, sweet marjoram
and a little winter savory; to these put some
pickled oysters and some anchovies, two or three ;
both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt,
and the oysters should not; to these you must
add also a pound of sweet butter which you are
to mix with the herbs that are shred, and let them
, PICKEREL FISHING 337
all be well salted. If the pike be more than a
yard long then you may put into these herbs
more than a pound, or if he be less, then less
butter will suffice. These being thus mixed, with
a blade or two of mace, must be put into the
pike's belly, and then his belly sewed up so as to
keep all the butter in his belly if it be possible;
if not, then as much of it as you possibly can ; but
do not take off the scales. Then you are to
thrust the spit through his mouth and out at his
tail ; and then take four or five or six split sticks
or very thin laths and convenient quantity of
tape or filleting; these laths are to be tied around
the pike's body from his head to his tail, and the
tape tied somewhat thick to prevent his breaking
or falling from the spit. Let him be roasted
very leisurely and often basted with claret wine
and anchovies and butter mixed together, and
also with what moisture falls from him into the
pan. When you have roasted him sufficiently
you are to hold under him, when you unwind or
cut the tape that ties him, such a dish as you
purpose to eat him out of, and let him fall into
it with the sauce that is roasted in his belly ; and
by this means the pike will be kept unbroken and
complete. Then to the sauce which was within
338 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
and also that sauce in the pan you are to add a
fit quantity of the best butter and to squeeze the
juice of three or four oranges; lastly you may
either put into the pike with the oysters two
cloves of garlic and take it whole out when the
pike is cut off the spit; or to give the sauce a
haut-gout, let the dish into which you let fall the
pike be rubbed with it. The using or not of this
garlic is left to your discretion."
Surely the pike is the king of fishes when he
is cooked in that fashion, and I doilbt not a pond
pickerel thus served becomes at least a prince.
"This dish of meat," says Walton, "is too good
for any but anglers or very honest men." I am
sure it is none too good for pickerel fishermen,
and when I think of it I do not wonder that they
are fat.
CHAPTER XXVI
YULE FIRES
The Peace of the Gods which our Aryan for-
bears knew descended at Yuletide hovers near al-
ways as we watch the Yule log, whether in the
keen air under the stars, or in the tapestried
shelter about the carefully fended hearth. Man
loves warmth, but he worships flame, as he al-
ways has since he first saw it fall from heaven,
though .few of us now make our prayer to it.
Its flicker in the night will draw us far ; nor are
we alone in this, for all the wild things of the
wood come as well and toss back its flare from
eyes wide with wonder. As they stand at gaze
before it, unwinking, so do we, letting its word-
less message touch the primal fonts of peace.
Around the camp-fire, whether without or within,
all men are brothers and the breaking of bread
and the tasting of salt are but the more formal
symbols of fellowship. Man has made God in
many images besides his own, but none has found
a finer symbolism than the ancient Persians, who
339
340 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
saw in flame the most ethereal expression of
beneficence and purity. The race has grown
older now and we strive to outgrow what we call
childish things, yet we get new strength for
dwelling in our higher levels of mature thought
by dropping back now and then to the primitive
customs and touching with smiling reverence the
ancient forms of expression. Here in America
is the smelting pot of nations and we are uniting
once more in one race the scattered children of
the Aryan stock. Each child brings as play
what was once worship — Saxon, Celtic, Greek or
Latin, all uniting again in the Christmas celebra-
tion and each bringing his fagot for the lighting
of the Yule log, which burns on Christmas Eve.
Nor does it matter to us now from what tree
that log is cut, though once it did. The ancient
Aryans who were forefathers of us all lived very
near to nature and all their thought was built
upon her moods. Our Christmas tree with its
lighted candles and its glow of tinsel ornaments
is but a tiny image of their sun tree, which began
to grow with the first lengthening of the days.
They imaged in this dawning light a pillar of
fire like a tree trunk that grew and spread over
the heavens, bringing through spring all the
YULE FIRES 341
beneficient gifts of summer. The rays were
twigs, the glowing clouds foliage, and the sun,
moon and stars golden fruit that hung from these
celestial branches. Out of this as the race grew
came also many another romantic symbolism of
cherished belief. Among the glowing sunset
clouds was hung the golden fleece of the Cholchis.
The golden apples of the Hesperides grew there.
The very lightning flash was but a celestial mis-
tletoe growing mysteriously upon the limbs of
this flame tree as it grows on the oaks in the
forests beneath which they hunted. Secure in
our better beliefs, we call their worship supersti-
tion, but it is well that they had it. It was the
groping expression of imagination without which
we are no better than the beasts and would never
find the really spiritual for which w* still seek.
The most perfect descendant of this sun tree
was the world-ash of the Scandinavian myth-
ology, the "Yggsdrasil" of the Edda, in which
it is described, with the many mystic rites which
grew up about its worship. Hence in Western
Europe the proper Yule log was the trunk of an
ash tree bound with as many green hazel withes
as possible, the hazel being also a sacred tree with
these people. As late as thirty years ago, and I
342 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
doubt not still, the Yule log was thus put to burn
on Christmas Eve in many an English fireplace.
There some part of it was to be kept smouldering,
however low the fire might get, and the blaze of
the next day was to be relighted from it for the
twelve days of Christmas. Moreover, from a
portion of this log should be relighted the Yule
fire of the next year, that its magic might be per-
petual and thus all evil spirits be w^arded from
the house. Not a bad superstition this, the brand
standing as a constant reminder of the spirit of
peace and good will lighted in the Christmas fire,
not to be forgotten till it is kindled anew by the
relighting of the blaze on the hearth a year hence.
Here in New England we come, little by little,
back to these kindly old customs that mean so
much when the outward observance is informed
with the thought which it represents. The old
fireplaces which were once ignominiously built up
with bricks 'to give free draft to the air-tight
stove in its hollow materialism are being re-
opened, and in them again we light our Yule
fires. Nor is the spirit banished with the season.
The blaze from the burning log on the open
hearth is the kindliest welcome that a room can
give to him who enters it. In it the rough rind
YULE FIRES 343
of our Puritanism burns away and the glow
within shines forth as we sit about this primal
altar of our race, fire^worshipping.
It was the olden custom for host and guests to
watch the first burning of this ashen fagot, and
as the hazel withes one by one burned away the
severing of the bond was the signal for the pass-
ing of the flagon, the loosing of the genial hos-
pitality pent within the breasts of all and set free
with the flames. Perhaps many who took part
in these rollicking ceremonials thought they cared
merely for the cakes and ale, but even they were
self deceived. It was the genial freeing of the
spirit of Christmas good-will to all, the fellow-
ship that touched deepest, though they may not
have formulated the fact even in their thoughts.
No wonder that the children, whose clear sight is
unblurred by too much learning of things which
are not so, knew that to this fond fire on Christ-
mas eve must come that patron saint of gifts,
Santa Claus, even though, the house being locked,
he must climb down the wide chimney to reach it.
We have forgotten the shoe, which in the folk
tales of our earliest forbears of the North Euro-
pean forests was the symbol of mutually helpful
deeds of love. The children of these days placed
344 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
it 'by the Yule fire, that Santa Claus might load it
with gifts. Nowadays we hang the stocking in
its stead, perhaps because it holds more.
I do not take it kindly of old Ben Franklin that
he, almost an hundred years ago, with his Poor
Richard wisdom taught us to economize our fuel
by shutting up our fire in stoves, for what we
gained in the flesh we lost in the spirit, and it is
good that in the modern house, however mechani-
cally complicated the heating apparatus, we build
fireplaces once again that our souls may be
warmed with the sight of the flame. The im-
pulse to worship fire still lingers within us and
though we have better creeds than that of
Zoroaster and truer spiritual ideals than the
Parsees we can have no more appealing symbol of
the purely spiritual than flame. Phlogiston
might well be another word for soul and we are
unkind to the old philosophers to take them too
literally. The alchemists were dreamers rather
than doers after all, and though it is the fashion
to laud the doers it is often the dreamers that
see most clearly. As the flame leapt upward
from the burning wood they saw in it a rare, pure,
ethereal substance which they called Phlogiston.
YULE FIRES 345
Nor did they yield their theory when Lavoisier
claimed to disprove it by burning phosphorus in
oxygen and weighing the result, which was
heavier than the phosphorus had been. There-
upon the world derided the alchemists and lauded
Lavoisier whose experiments laid the founda-
tion for the intricate science of modern chem-
istry. For all that, science gives us the truth
only from one angle and the science of one age
is often disproved by the science of the next.
Modern chemists may agree on what happens
when phosphorus burns, but many a theory of
Lavoisier's day has been disproved in its turn.
A thousand scientists have declared flying im-
possible to man, yet today men fly. Lavoisier
was right, no doubt. -Combustion is the com-
bination of an element with oxygen. He proved
that with his chemist's balance. Yet how did he
prove that some imponderable element does not
leap from wood in flame ? As well say that when
a man dies the spirit has not left the body be-
cause he weighs the same. Watching the falling
em'bers of the Yule log leap into flames before
they turn gray, I am apt to think that the in-
tuition of the alchemists touched a truth that the
chemical apparatus missed. You cannot meas-
346 OLD PLY^^IOUTH TRAILS
ure its reaction on the mind of man or weigh
the resuks, but they are there.
Wood was the sole fuel of the New England
pioneers for two centuries. In fact in many a
remote farmhouse it is today, and the fathers
soon found by use which kind lighted quickest
and which burned longest and with the most
steady heat, facts which the subtle analysis of
the chemists only confirmed. The conifers light
most readily and burn rapidly with the greatest
heat in a given time. The hard woods burn long-
est, some of them retaining fire for a surpris-
ing length of time under just the right conditions.
The woodsmen will tell you that the pines light
easily and burn fiercely because of the pitch they
contain. This is true but the chemists have
added another reason. Pine gives off much hy-
drogen when heated and this light and inflamma-
ble gas gives much flame. Even in pine wood
which does not seem resinous to the touch there is
much of this volatile inflammable material and a
good store of pine kindlings is a first requisite in
every well ordered country household. Of the
hard woods hickory is easily king as a fire holder.
Yet the oaks, white and red, and the sugar and
YULE FIRES 347
black maples are not far behind in value. Our
American white ash and elm rank well up with
the oaks, so does beech, while the softer woods
fall behind. Moreover, trees grown on high,
droughty, barren soil show greater heating power
than those of the same variety which happen to
stand in rich, but moister soil.
Long ago an American chemist confirmed what
the practical experience of the woodman had al-
ready decided. Marcus Bull's table of the heat-
ing value of American woods is as follows:
Shagbark hickory, 100; white oak, 81; red oak,
68; sugar maple, 60; red maple, 54; white ash,
jy ; chestnut, 52 ; white beech, 65 ; black birch, 63 ;
white birch, 48; pitch pine, 43; white pine, 42.
Wood, according to the chemists, is a carbo-
hydrate and the greater the proportion of carbon
which it contains the greater is its heat-giving
value, the greater the proportion of hydrogen
the greater the output of ruddy flames. Yet
chemists, who are so sure the alchemists had no
ground for their beliefs, do not always agree
among themselves. Professor Bull's table of the
heat-giving properties of the various woods has
been declared inaccurate by other chemists, in
spite of the fact that experience in actual use
348 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
bears it out in many particulars. Again, either
the chemists of Europe are at variance with ours
or else their trees are, for Gottlieb's table of the
heat-giving properties of European trees of
similar varieties turns ours upside down. Gott-
lieb's table of calorics puts oak at the bottom of
the list and pine at the top. It is as follows:
Oak, 46.20; ash, 47-ii 5 elm, 47-28; beech, 4774)
birch, 47.71 ; fir, 50.35 ; pine, 50.85.
There is a certain interest in all this, but to
him who lights the Yule log on Chrismas Eve it
probably matters Httle. He knows that pine will
kindle his fire readily and that one of the hard
woods will hold it longest. He knows that out
of the leaping flames, whether they be composed
of phlogiston or incandescent hydrogen, loved
fancies flashed into the minds of the elder race,
born of the flicker of flame on the imagination
of a primitive people, backed by dark forests,
night and wind-riding storms. If he have the
hardihood let him light his Yule log in the
winter twilight of the snowy woods. He will
do well to pick a spot where a dense growth of
pines shelters him from the wind and a steep
ledge makes for him fireplace and chimney at
once. Then it does not matter if the snow is
YULE FIRES 349
deep on the ground and the air filled with flying
flakes; his hearth may soon glow with comfort.
Even from a materialistic point of view the an-
cients did well to worship fire. Out of it was to
come more or less directly all the material
progress of the race toward civilization.
The pines, whose presence in the woods is al-
ways a benediction, stand ready with the best
fire kindlings in the world. Their twigs light at
the flare of a match. The larger limbs will fire
from these and send flames leaping high. On a
fire well started thus between backlog and fore-
stick he may pile such dry, hard wood as he has at
hand. The forest will give him plenty if he is on
friendly terms with it. The forest will give him
more, too. Out of its mysterious darkness will
slip easily into his mind the old-time loved and
half-forgotten legends that grew out of the
winter night in the twilight of the early days of
the Aryan race. At the time of the winter sol-
stice it was the custom of the gods to leave their
dwellings in heaven and come down to earth. In
the shout of the wind in the pines he may well
hear Wotan riding overhead in his gray cloak
and broad-brimmed hat pressed low over his face.
350 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
He may glimpse his white steed whirUng by and
see plainly in the upflaring light of his fire the
army of white souls that scurries behind the
winter-god as he rides on his way. Black eagles
fly with him and the wolves of the air gallop on
before. The world-ash was a gigantic evergreen
in whose branches were the abodes of giants and
dwarfs as well as men and gods. Screened by
night within the forest this tree may well be near
with the springs of being and non-being within
its roots and the Nornen sitting by, silent and
grave. He may catch the gleam of the eyes of
Loki as the firelight glints on the frost crystals
among the snow-laden branches. Thus easily
does a thousand years of civilization slip from us
when face to face with night and the forest.
Yet if night and the winter ghosts of old ride
just beyond the circle of his firelight, within it he
is in the magic ring of comfort and safety.
Around the Yule logs of centuries the race has
warmed its heart as well as its hands, its soul
as well as its body, and the old gods of terror
have become the saints of good will. Out of the
winter night Wotan steps into the light of the
Yule fire, transformed into St. Nicholas, the very
spirit of genial generosity. If we will go from
YULE FIRES 35 1
our forest vigil to the hearth in any home we will
find the world-ash, no longer weird and awesome
with the fates sitting silent at its foot, but trans-
formed into the very symbol of light and happi-
ness and cheer, the Christmas tree. In the light
of twenty centuries around the Yule log we have
forgotten to be afraid and have made out of our
weird dreams friendly fancies. Where once the
fearsome dragon twined about the sun-tree we
simulate his folds with strings of pop-corn. The
unquenchable lights that flamed upon its twigs
are now twinkling candles. The sun, moon and
stars that once were the symbolic fruit grow
again in tinsel ornament and, where we follow
the legend closely, Eikthyner the stag, Heidrun
the goat, Freyer's boar and Wotan's ravens and
wolves, are hung in tiny effigy as confectioner's
sweets. Thus with the Christmas tree alight and
with the Yule log on the hearth we symbolize the
old worship of the sun-tree and of fire through
which we have grown to the better faith of which
Christmas is one great commemorative festival.
THE END
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
REFERENCE DEPARTMENT
This book is
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